At the start of this week, the trial of nine suspects believed to be part of a ring that allegedly swindled and robbed dozens of elderly people, from the Alentejo region to northern Portugal, commenced at a court in Vila Real.
Proceedings were kept under a heavy curtain of police security with the majority of the defendants opting to remain silent.
Eight of the defendants, aged 28 to 59, are said to be related and stand accused of 130 crimes, including conspiracy, money laundering, robbery, fraud, theft, intimidation, and possession of an illegal weapon.
The ninth defendant is a goldsmith suspected of receiving stolen goods.
According to the Public Prosecutor, the suspects are believed to have “stolen money and gold from elderly and helpless people in rural and isolated areas, using a high level of violence and firearms to intimidate victims”, since at least 2008.
It is one of a number of recently-reported cases of senior citizens being cruelly duped.
Last Friday police announced the arrest of two individuals suspected of defrauding the elderly; the first, a 17-year-old youth who was detained in Seixal for “a number of robberies” and who “acted with particular violence on victims, many of them elderly and with walking difficulties.”
The second suspect was a 50-year-old man arrested by PSP officers in Alverca do Ribatejo, who is believed to be responsible for a series of thefts in Lisbon and who had been followed by police.
He was caught in the act, after approaching a 73-year-old woman near the building where she lived.
“After a few minutes’ conversation, they entered the building”, a statement from the PSP explained, elaborating: “Given the suspicion that this man was associated with scams against senior citizens, officers waited until he came out of the building and then made their approach, which confirmed a scam was in progress in which he was pretending to be a friend and work colleague of the victim’s son.
“The detainee, who has a history of this type of criminal offence, is suspected of acting in preference against the elderly, men and women, being well-dressed and well-spoken, making them believe that he is a friend of the family and needs money to collect an order from the Post Office addressed to the family of the victim.”
The police added that the suspect had, earlier that day, tried the same approach on another senior citizen in the same city.
More recently, an 80-year-old woman was robbed in her own home during the early hours of Tuesday morning, in Corredoura, Porto de Mós. Four hooded assailants tied the pensioner up with adhesive tape before making off with two pairs of gold earrings, a silver chain, a mobile phone and €200.
Crime awareness and prevention association Safe Communities Algarve (SCA) has reported that it has recently received reports from people living mainly in rural areas regarding door-to-door callers, who have approached them without any invitation or notification.
“This has ranged from so-called charity workers collecting money to a young, smartly dressed individual stating he was from EDP”, the association said, explaining: “In the case of the latter, who knocked on the doors of several properties in the area of Boliqueime, he made enquiries about changing the person’s electricity account. He was unable to provide identification and when asked for his company’s contact telephone number could only provide his own mobile number.”
David Thomas, President of SCA added: “Unfortunately many of these incidents are not reported to police until it is too late”, and stressed “this appears to be a re-occurring trend, particularly at this time of the year, the victims mainly being the elderly often living alone.”
Some of the more commonly-used scams, information from SCA elaborated, see the con artist pretending to be from a parcel delivery service, “usually CTT”; pretending to be from the Finanças and asking people to hand over gold in return for money, which turns out to be counterfeit, and offering to exchange their old bank notes with new ones – “again the new ones are counterfeit.”
Another Modus Operandi that has previously been applied, according to the association, is the caller posing as an EDP or a government authority in order to gain access to the property.
“It is important to look after elderly neighbours particularly those living alone. By the reporting of these bogus callers to the police may avoid the elderly being scammed - sometimes out of their life savings”, David Thomas added.
GNR police have, SCA says, been active in trying to contact the elderly in order to alert them to such scams and provide advice.
Basic advice to those who suspect they may be the target of a scam includes always asking for the caller’s identification and checking that charity workers have the required government identification and permission to make collections.
An annual operation carried out last year by the GNR force, to clamp down on crime against the elderly, showed that there were 33,963 elderly people living alone or in isolated places.
Carried out between 15 January and 15 February 2014, the ‘Senior Census 2014’ mapped 21,286 elderly citizens living alone, 4,281 living in isolated locations, and 3,026 living alone and in isolated locations; figures that were up on the census from the year before.
In September last year the GNR also launched several nationwide campaigns to raise awareness among the elderly on how to avoid becoming the victims of scams.
Some 3,761 officers were involved in the ‘Elderly in Safety 2014’ campaign, which also focused on educating senior citizens about the new €10 note ahead of it coming into circulation last year.
Last month GNR officers in Lagos held a series of meetings for the county’s older residents, which aimed to “raise awareness and inform older people on what to do in situations of fraud, scams and theft.”