They asked him to transfer 100 thousand euros to stop an alleged scam in progress against him. But on the afternoon of December 30, a seventy-four-year-old from Tortolì contacted the local Carabinieri station to report that he had received a call from a self-styled Carabinieri officer from the provincial command of Nuoro.
The fake soldier informed the victim of an ongoing investigation into several directors of Banco di Sardegna branches who, together with their employees, were defrauding numerous account holders through undue withdrawals from their current accounts. By raising this risk, the scammer attempted to convince his interlocutor to make a bank transfer of 100 thousand euros through his branch, a necessary operation to collaborate with the investigation and secure the money in his current account.
The victim, who realized the attempted scam, immediately contacted the Carabinieri of Tortolì from whom he received instructions not to carry out any operation and to file a complaint to allow the identification of those responsible.
The scammer, as has already happened in the past months on other similar occasions, in addition to pretending to be a member of the Carabinieri, also used the technique of "telephone spoofing", through which he manipulated the telephone number displayed by the victim , making it appear to actually be traceable to the Provincial Command of the Carabinieri.
After the valuable complaint filed by the victim, the military immediately began the first investigations to identify those responsible, who after the first call attempted to contact the victim other times with a mobile phone number not attributable to any entity.
The Carabinieri, through the organization of ad hoc seminars, the distribution of leaflets in post offices, churches, oratories and other meeting places, has recently carried out (and continues to carry out) a careful and constant awareness-raising action regarding this type of scam, which is carried out by gaining the victim's trust through various techniques, such as the one adopted in this case.
