Several years ago police bulletins started featuring information about telephone scams often involving small sums of money, perhaps a couple of hundred leva at the most. At the time this was not viewed as anything more than small-time crooks trying to fool pensioners by selling them old plumbing parts for something else. The duped party was seen as to blame for believing the story, just as one gets fooled when buying a "gold" Rolex in the park.   

Today, phone scams have proved a lucrative business with organised practitioners all over Bulgaria, stealing hundreds of thousands of leva, often from elderly people. Unlike the "plumbing parts" scheme, however, the techniques in this case are more sophisticated. Crooks run different schemes but, according to police reports, all of them rely on people’s fear and confusion when their mind is unclear and they are desperate to save a loved one.  

A favour      
The most common  schemes involves a "traffic incident" involving a relative of the victim.
The victim answers a phone call telling them that a relative (usually husband, son or daughter) has caused a road accident, seriously injuring or killing someone. The voice pretends to be a "concerned" lawyer, police officer or a prosecutor who wants to "help" the victim’s family by manipulating police records of the incident so that the victim’s loved one can avoid a long prison term.

The caller demands a sum of money which, according to police reports, varies from 5000 leva to more than 10 000 leva. The money has to be raised and delivered as soon as possible, preferably within an hour, otherwise the "sympathetic policeman or lawyer" will be unable to help.

You may feel that such a story is easily identified as false but police bulletins over the last two years report otherwise. The scheme has worked flawlessly, deceiving hundreds of people. Crooks have exploited people’s panic and desire to do whatever it takes, even bribe a police officer, to save a relative.

Significantly, the entire scheme is designed to last no more than an hour, just enough time for the victim to get money out of the bank and go to the delivery point. The victim’s only concern is to save his or her son, daughter or husband. They neglect even simple procedures, such as calling other relatives for help. Targets are well chosen, often pensioners and vulnerable groups.

Well prepared
Running such scams might look easy but it takes a lot of effort and organisation to dupe people. In all cases the villains use detailed information about the victim’s relatives - their real names and other facts from their everyday life. In fact, the only reason for the scam failing is when crooks get their facts wrong, so triggering people’s doubts.  

Information is obtained after several days observing victims’ habits, their addresses, phone numbers and cars. Armed with all this information, crooks have a great chance of pulling the trick off, especially when they target elderly people.

Unfortunately, in one such case, the result was not merely the loss of a family’s savings but also the life of a pensioner who could not forgive her own naivety. A 76-year-old woman was tricked into paying 10 000 pounds sterling, which her son had been saving for years, to a crook who presented himself as her son and asked for the money to fund his recovery from swine flu.

The flu is the most recent scam whereby crooks, exploiting fear of the virus, have found it easy to profit. Tragically, the lady concerned hung herself after realising she had been duped.

The only good result in this case is that the alleged perpetrators were arrested. They were caught after trying to pull the same scheme on an elderly couple who tipped off police.   

Reaction
The problem with such phone scams is that unless people realise the trick and alert the authorities, police can do little except warn people not to trust such calls. Usually, however, many people feel ashamed that they have been fooled so easily and prefer not to alert police.

The police, for their part, claim that legislation needs amending so that it could be more effective. In a number of interviews the new Interior Ministry leadership demanded such changes so that it can have immediate access to mobile phone records and track perpetrators down. Currently, police have to wait for a court approval which, together with mobile phone operators’ lack of adequate response, has delayed investigations.

The issue is part of the interior ministry’s efforts to give police unrestricted access to private communication data without prior court approval. This prompts serious public concern that its privacy rights might be violated. So all police can do currently is warn people with information campaigns and rely on people’s common sense to detect the fraud.