With the introduction of the Euro, news of cons involving people who live alone or elderly people are becoming more and more common.

The new currency in fact, gives con men yet another pretext to be used to approach weak victims and trick them.

Various and quite often imaginative excuses are employed to approach the victim, these are mainly:

some fake bank clerks arrive at your home to change your money
fake policemen have to verify if the money that you have in your home is counterfeit or real
con men tell you that you are the lucky winner of a large sum of money, or that you have received a large inheritance, but you have to give them some guarantees in order to be able to access such
False postal workers, municipal workers, Electricity board workers, Gas Company workers etc…come to your home with various different excuses, to establish contact with the victim.

Let’s take a schematic look at how this kind of con is perpetrated and what preventative and behavioural measures we can adopt in order to avoid being the victims of such.

The con man will appear well groomed and well dressed, quite distinct, kind – never judge a book by its cover, appearance is not always what it seems.

The con man will attempt to approach his victim by impersonating an institutional figure or a prestigious personality, in order to create a sense of trust and deference in his victim, but real institutional figures or important personalities would never go to the home of a citizen or stop someone on the street to request a collaboration (they would convoke this person to the Ministry, Bank, Municipal Offices or Offices of the Regional authorities etc…)

The con man will demand that the operation proposed be concluded immediately, since he is aware of the fact that time is not in his favour (the victim could think more reasonably or speak to someone else about the matter, having time to think it over), a golden rule in business is to always ask for more time when your interlocutor asks you to conclude the proposed operation rapidly.

Sometimes a con man will use a kind of hypnosis on his victim as soon as he has established a personal contact. In this manner he will manage to rob the house of its contents undisturbed or order his victim to go to the bank and withdraw money.

Therefore:
If you are stopped on the street by someone with an unclear excuse, interrupt the contact quickly, do not allow the other person to embrace or touch you (for example: “hold on to me madam, I’ll help you to cross the road”), as physical contact often forms part of the hypnosis techniques.
Observe your interlocutor carefully, take the registration plate of the car that they are travelling in
If possible, try to involve other people in the conversation, call a family member or go to a friend’s house, someone who might be able to have better control of the situation
If your interlocutor tells you a story or pretends to be the employee of a public entity or a family friend, check out this immediately before proceeding in the conversation
Never open the door to strangers if you are home alone
Always get visitors to explain the reason for their visit over the intercom or the telephone and call the Police at the slightest suspicion.
Never fear that you are being ill mannered or too mistrustful
Never keep large sums of money or valuables in your home
Arrange with your bank for the withdrawal of large sums of money to be subject to the joint signature of at least one other family member (the bank should be vigilant on anomalous withdrawals, but these often go unchecked, in some cases the con man even hypnotised the cashier or the bank cashier was an accomplice to the con).

When you realise that you have been conned it is very important to intervene in good time:
do not interfere with the scene of the con so as to allow for fingerprints to be found or indeed other elements
reconstruct the con in the tiniest details
draw an identikit of the con man and examine the Police photos carefully trying to recall every minimum element that might characterise the con men.
Go over the route taken and try to get witnesses to the event or video recordings (for example in the bank or in the surroundings the con man may have been filmed by the security cameras).

Lastly, although an appetising victim for a con such as those described above, an elderly person who lives alone becomes a very difficult and dangerous target for the potential con man if his home is visited regularly by family members, if he lives with a dog and if he has security cameras installed in his home.

Published on: 28 Jul 2004