Overview
- Federal and state police are running a week of outreach with posters, phone hours, information events and materials in care facilities to alert especially older residents.
- Authorities urge victims to report every attempt, noting a large number of unrecorded cases due to shame and uncertainty about contacting police.
- Fraudsters now pose as grandchildren, police or bank staff by phone and via WhatsApp texts, phishing emails and fake letters, including schemes to collect bank cards and PINs.
- Consumer advocates caution that criminals can generate realistic voice deepfakes from brief audio samples, making verification via known numbers and family codewords essential.
- In Bremen, a 92-year-old kept callers talking while relatives phoned 110, enabling police to arrest two suspects at a planned cash handover, a case officers hailed as model behavior.