Police on Tuesday arrested 12
people in northern Italy, Poland and Switzerland on suspicion of
belonging to an international gang that specialized in
defrauding the elderly.
Five alleged ringleaders, all of them Polish, were arrested
in the northern city of Novara, police said.
Another 20 suspects are being sought by police in Italy and
abroad, and 71 more are under investigation in the probe that
began in 2010.
The gang allegedly chose their potential marks out of the
phone book, calling people with old-fashioned first names that
were more likely to belong to an older generation and conning
them out of millions of euros, according to investigators.
Some 1,000 senior citizens reported being scammed to
authorities.
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