Estonia: 2 elderly women lose money to online scammers

• Published date: 17 May 2022
• Publication title: LETA

Two elderly residents of Harju County have fallen victim to online scammers, losing thousands of euros in total, the police said on Tuesday.

On May 16, proceedings were opened in a case where a 70-year-old woman living in the small town of Kuusalu received a call from an unidentified person introducing themselves as an employee of mobile operator Tele2 and telling the victim that someone had entered into a hire purchase agreement on her behalf. Next, the victim received a call from someone pretending to be from Swedbank, who claimed that the woman's phone was infected with a virus and that suspicious transactions were taking place in her bank account.

The victim was told to provide her personal identification code, details of her place of residence and a photo of her ID card. It was later revealed that a loan application had been submitted on her behalf and an account had been opened with Bigbank. A payment of 545 euros had...