In Malmö District Court, a very extensive case is now underway regarding fraud against the elderly.
It is about a league which, in a suggested way, is supposed to have posed as police officers in order to cheat mainly women in their 80s and 90s out of jewelery and large sums of money.
TV4 Nyheterna’s review of the main suspects in the fraud show that they are believed to have committed a total of 342 crimes together in less than a year.
According to the indictment, there are four people at the top of the league. Two couples in Malmö who are said to have been driving all stages of the fraud, from planning to recovery of the stolen goods. One couple is married, both 31 years old. The other couple are 25 and 27 years old respectively. All four are previously convicted of theft and fraud. The 25-year-old just a few years ago went to prison for similar crimes against the elderly.
“You get pissed off”
The 31-year-old man is charged with a total of 121 suspected crimes, including 36 burglaries, 36 serious frauds, assault and money laundering. His wife is suspected of 115 crimes. The other couple are charged with 65 and 41 crimes respectively during the theft tour through Sweden.
– You get pissed off. You get irritated. In addition to the fact that these are heinous crimes, there are time-consuming investigations that require a lot of work to piece together the serial crime, says Karl Fridén, who is the preliminary investigation leader and group leader at the police’s Circa group, which investigates crimes against the elderly.
The league’s criminal profits during the time they toured Sweden last year and defrauded the elderly are estimated to amount to at least two million kroner. The main suspects are believed to have called elderly people and said they worked for the Swedish Police Agency. While the conversation was going on, the assistants are said to have called the crime victims dressed as police officers and said that they needed to collect jewelry, cash and bank cards in order to be able to photograph them at the police station.
The main suspects deny any wrongdoing
When the main suspects were questioned in Malmö district court yesterday, they denied any crime.
– Neither I nor my wife have anything to do with this. We have never called anyone, we have never asked anyone to call, or asked anyone for anything at all. We have absolutely nothing to do with this, said the 31-year-old man during questioning in court.
When prosecutor Lena Körner at the national unit against international and organized crime questioned the 25-year-old suspect about the phone calls, he said that he had lent his phone to an unknown person several times. When the prosecutor asked why he lent his phone, the 25-year-old replied “That’s a good question. No idea. I don’t know what he would use it for.”