The voice on the other end of the phone was calm, authoritative. It left no room for doubt. Thus, in a matter of minutes, an 80-year-old retiree from Alghero found herself ensnared in a meticulously planned scam, designed to make her believe she was unwittingly involved in a sensitive judicial investigation.
It all happened yesterday morning, when the landline rang. "We're law enforcement, and the magistrate is with us. Have you heard about the robbery at a jewelry store in Sassari? They used a car registered to your husband. Is he perhaps at home?" The pensioner replied that her husband wasn't home. From that moment on, the scammers took complete control of the situation.
They asked her to continue the conversation on her cell phone, but left the landline off-hook, preventing her from receiving any further calls. It's a tried-and-true technique: isolate the victim and prevent her from making any inquiries. While one of the two interlocutors continued talking to her, the other was already heading toward her home. To keep her occupied and prevent her from thinking, they dictated numbers, codes, and digits to her, which she then wrote down on a piece of paper, as if she were filling out an official report.
"I felt hypnotized," the woman later recounted. "We need to check," the scene continued. "My assistant is coming soon. Prepare all the jewelry you own and put it in a white cloth. Also the cash, everything you have . We need it to compare with the stolen goods."
A few minutes later, the doorbell actually rang. A man in his forties appeared at the door and casually entered the house. He collected the jewelry, even weighed it on the kitchen scale, took the cash, and before leaving, instructed the pensioner to keep the incident strictly confidential. Meanwhile, the landline remained engaged, exactly as the thieves had ordered.
Only when she was able to speak to her son did the woman finally realize she had been scammed. The alarm was raised immediately. The Carabinieri of the Alghero Company began their investigation and, surprisingly quickly, managed to intercept one of the alleged scammers at a checkpoint.
