Police Nab Scam Courier in South Bohemia Coming to Collect 800,000 Crowns

Police in the South Bohemian Region have detained a 21-year-old courier who arrived to collect yet another cash payment from a victim of investment fraud. According to police, the young man has been charged with complicity in fraud and has been taken into custody.

Police spokeswoman Lenka Krausová said investigators are now trying to establish who was giving the detained man his orders, how many other victims he had already visited to make similar "collections," and where the money ultimately ended up. According to police, this was not the courier's first such trip — he had previously picked up hundreds of thousands of crowns from another victim in a different region, and the full extent of the criminal network has yet to be uncovered.

How the scam unfolded

The victim was a man from the České Budějovice region who lost three million crowns over the course of five months. In March, he responded to an online ad promising lucrative investment returns. Soon after, unknown individuals contacted him and persuaded him to transfer money to designated accounts, as well as to hand over cash in person to couriers on several occasions.

To convince the "investor" that his money was earning returns, the scammers sent him a link to a fake website where he could supposedly track his investment account balance and growing profits. Each time he handed over cash in person, the fraudsters gave him a receipt. A different courier showed up every time, but each handover was always confirmed using the same password, which the victim himself had come up with.

A trap for the courier

After several months of mounting losses, the man grew suspicious that he was being scammed and went to the police. When the unknown fraudster called once again demanding that he invest another 800,000 crowns and hand it over to a courier, the victim agreed — but this time he showed up to the meeting accompanied by forensic experts and members of a police tactical unit.

The courier arrived to collect the money, gave the agreed-upon password for the handover — and at that moment, handcuffs snapped around his wrists. Police say such schemes, involving fake investment platforms and couriers sent to collect cash in person, have been popping up more and more often in recent months. Fraudsters frequently disguise their websites as well-known news outlets, copying their design and logos to win the trust of potential victims.

Read also: Transferring money from Czechia abroad: Wise, Revolut, bank transfers

Source: novinky.cz