Two scams were carried out in Agrigento and Sciacca in the last few hours, with a practice now widespread in the province where in recent weeks several similar cases have been recorded in Favara, Canicattì, Ravanusa, Licata and in the city of the Temples itself. The criminals pass themselves off as policemen and, by putting pressure on two elderly women, manage to have thousands of euros worth of jewelery delivered to them. In Agrigento a pensioner received the “usual” phone call: “I am a police sergeant, her son was in a serious road accident. To prevent him from ending up in prison, 10 thousand euros are needed.”
Money which, again according to the Carabinieri non-commissioned officer, had to be “immediately delivered to a lawyer who was already at the old woman’s house”. A seventy-year-old from Agrigento, resident in the sports field neighbourhood, literally terrified, handed over to the self-styled lawyer everything she had at home: gold and jewels she had in her safe, worth 8 thousand euros which were needed to help her son. When the woman discovered and understood that she had been defrauded, she could not help but go to the police reporting office and tell what had happened to her and how much that deception cost her.
A 74-year-old victim was killed in Sciacca. The woman was reached by a fake policeman who had promised her “legal trouble” for her son if she did not pay 5 thousand euros. A sum that the pensioner did not have at home and which she decided to pay by handing over the family jewels. According to an initial estimate, the value would amount to 20 thousand euros. An accomplice of the fake soldier took them over. The woman only later realized that she had been deceived and so she reported the incident to the police.
