Updated 28 Oct, 11:08
A suspect in a large telephone fraud case targeting mainly elderly people has been charged with seeking to gain a total of 73.6 million kroner, prosecutors told Copenhagen City Court on Wednesday, according to Berlingske, Ekstra Bladet and kristeligt-dagblad.dk.
The prosecution is seeking a remand order against the man, who was not present in the courtroom and is believed to be hiding abroad. The hearing will run through Wednesday and Thursday. A remand ruling would allow the prosecution to issue a European arrest warrant so he can be arrested abroad and later brought before a Danish court.
In the case, the man is charged with obtaining actual proceeds of 28.8 million kroner through calls made specifically to elderly people, who were told on the phone that they were speaking with the police. Adding attempted and completed frauds together brings the total to 73.6 million kroner, prosecutor Eva Dal Jørgensen told the court. The case lists a total of 309 offences, covering fraud and data fraud.
Several people were involved. The so-called callers phoned from Turkey, Thailand and Dubai, among other places. Once the elderly people had been manipulated, a person turned up at the address to collect credit cards.
The contact frauds have hit elderly people in Copenhagen and Frederiksberg.
Last summer, a 21-year-old woman who worked as a caller, including from Turkey, was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison. She was controlled by three different masterminds and told the court she picked out victims by looking them up in Krak and on the 118 directory service, working from a script. "I am really sorry," the woman said.
She earned several hundred thousand kroner from defrauding the elderly.