Courier in court Pensioner defrauded of assets with new counterfeit money scam
Fraudsters used a counterfeit money trick to swindle around 30,000 francs from two pensioners. A 32-year-old woman who transported the money as a courier has now had to stand trial.
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- Using a new counterfeit money scam, con artists defrauded two pensioners from Zurich and Aargau of a total of 30,000 francs.
- The 32-year-old woman, who twice collected money for her husband as a courier, has now stood trial in Zurzach AG.
- The court acquitted her in the Aargau case, but sentenced her to a conditional prison sentence of five months and a fine of CHF 1,000 in the Zurich case.
The so-called "grandchildren trick" keeps making it into the media, and this is probably one of the reasons why fraudsters are now using new scams. For example, the counterfeit money trick that two pensioners fell victim to in the fall of 2023: Criminals scammed around 30,000 francs from the senior citizens from Zurich and Aargau.
Callers posed as bank employees and later as police officers and claimed that there were suspicious banknotes in the elderly women's bank accounts that needed to be checked immediately. Both victims, then aged 80 and 90 respectively, withdrew cash and handed it over to a courier.
The woman who finally collected the money and brought it to the con artists now had to answer to the Zurzach District Court for aiding and abetting multiple frauds and money laundering. She is alleged to have collected envelopes containing large sums of money in both cases, as reported by the "Aargauer Zeitung" newspaper. The central question: was she a naive helper or did she know about the criminal activities, as the "Aargauer Zeitung " reported.
Hardly any memory of the details
The 32-year-old lives with her family in a neighboring canton and had twice taken over the jobs from her husband. In the courtroom, she described how she had hardly any memory of the details. She only knew that she had been on the road twice, she said in court. She hardly remembered any receipts or code words - only when the court president presented her with a receipt.
The handover of the envelope containing 14,500 francs to the 80-year-old from Zurzibiet was wordless. The defendant could no longer say for sure where exactly the second handover took place; one of them was demonstrably on the grounds of a hospital. The then 90-year-old, who lives in a nursing home in Zurich, asked the defendant when she received the 18,000 francs whether she was acting on behalf of the police or the public prosecutor's office.
According to her own statements, she only received further instructions afterwards: "I was only told where to take the envelope by telephone by a contact person when I was already back in my car," the woman is quoted as saying in the "Aargauer Zeitung". Contrary to what was initially reported, it was not the intended gentleman who got into her car, but a third party who took the envelopes and instructed her to drive into a dead end.
Conditional prison sentence and fine
It was only when her husband became uneasy about the situation that the couple went to the police. When asked how she felt today, the 32-year-old replied: "Not good! I only wanted to support my husband."
The public prosecutor demanded ten months' imprisonment suspended for two years, as well as a fine of CHF 2,000. The defence pleaded for acquittal and argued that the client "could not have recognized the criminal nature of her actions".
Court President Isabelle Stieger made a differentiated decision. In the case of the 82-year-old woman from Aargau, the defendant was acquitted. The victim had not asked any questions and was therefore partly to blame.
The case of the woman from the nursing home in Zurich was different. Here, the court found the 32-year-old guilty and imposed a conditional prison sentence of five months and a fine of CHF 1,000. The judge explained that the defendant "should have been aware that something was wrong".
