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Swedish girl gang targets elderly single men

TT/Rebecca Martin
TT/Rebecca Martin - [email protected]
Swedish girl gang targets elderly single men

After a spate of robberies by a gang of young women in Västerås in central Sweden, police have issued a warning to single elderly men to be on their guard.

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The women gain entry to the men’s apartments by feigning a need to use the phone or desperate for the men to give them a lift home.

“Single and elderly men are probably a group that it is easy to approach. Many are probably a bit lonely,” Börje Strömberg at Västerås police told the local Vestmanlands Läns Tidning (VLT) daily.

All of the women are reported to be in their early or mid-twenties. As they leave the victims’ flats valuables are found to be missing.

According to Strömberg, the older generation are more trusting than younger people.

“We have seen that older people are more likely to let strangers into their flats. Of course one should be helpful to people but one has to be careful,“ Strömberg told VLT.

In March a 78-year-old man let two women into his flat under the pretext that they needed to borrow his phone. When they left, the man found that he was missing 12,000 kronor ($1,913).

According to Strömberg, these kinds of thefts are not that common in Sweden.

“But there could be a large number of unreported cases. Crimes like these come and go. Some groups travel around robbing people like this and when they are found out they just move on somewhere else,” said Strömberg.

Some of the descriptions of the perpetrators lead police to believe that it is a gang of young women that prey on the men, according to Sveriges Radio (SR).

But with no leads as to who these women are the police have issued a warning to the public to be careful who they let in.

“Having a security chain on your door can sometimes be as important as having a fire alarm,” Strömberg told VLT.

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