Dozens arrested for swindling old folk

(ANSA) - Turin, July 22 - 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.