The Bitola Public Prosecutor’s Office (PPO), in coordination with the Investigation Center in that prosecutor’s office and the Bitola Interior Directorate, has uncovered an elaborate scheme of defrauding citizens with fake traffic accidents, through which over ten citizens were defrauded in the area of the Bitola Public Prosecutor’s Office in the last 2-3 months, from whom a total of over EUR 60,000 and other valuable items were extracted. The number of such events has been increasing especially since the beginning of February, since when six similar cases have already been recorded.
In all cases, the method of execution is similar – the victims are usually older people who receive a phone call that someone close to them has been seriously injured in a traffic accident and that money is urgently needed for a complex operation. The second version of false facts that the fraudsters present to some of the victims is that their loved one caused a traffic accident with serious consequences and that the money is needed to avoid prison.
Misled and afraid for their loved ones, the victims agree to pay various amounts of money in person – from several tens of thousands of denars to over EUR 20,000, gold jewelry and other valuable items. They hand over the money at various locations in Bitola, to people who were previously hired for work through an advertisement on Facebook. To date, the Bitola Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office has filed charges against four such people who are being prosecuted as accomplices in the fraud and who directly took the money from the defrauded citizens. According to the investigation, the money is then transferred and handed over to a currently unknown person in Bulgaria. What connects the cases are the phone numbers from Romania that were used in all these events to contact the victims.
