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Pensioner scammed with fake dollar bills

The Local Austria
The Local Austria - [email protected]
Pensioner scammed with fake dollar bills
Photo: APA/dpa

An 82-year-old woman from Villach was tricked into giving a couple €900, after they said they needed to pay for urgent hospital treatment. As ‘security’ they left her with a handbag full of US dollars - which turned out to be photocopies.

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The elderly lady was waiting at a bus stop on Wednesday night when a car with a Slovakian number plate stopped, asking for directions to the nearest hospital. The driver and her male passenger, both in their mid-thirties, said that a relative had been in a serious accident, and asked if the pensioner could get in their car and direct them to the hospital.

Once she was in the car the driver received a phone call from her ‘relative’, saying that she urgently needed to have an operation which was going to cost €1,500.

The woman asked the pensioner if she could lend them €900. The 82-year-old agreed and they drove to fetch it from her home. The woman left a handbag with her which she said contained $5,000, but turned out to be stuffed with copies.

The couple have since disappeared and police are searching for them. The woman is described as 160 cm tall with dark hair. She was dressed in a black jacket and jeans and spoke good German, with an eastern European accent. The man is around 180 cm tall, overweight, with short dark hair and was dressed in dark clothes.

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