Under the guise of helping, they deceive seniors. "Instead of Christmas cleaning, cleaning out of money and valuables."

"Fraudulent volunteers" a major threat

"I'll clean a senior citizen's house for Christmas," "I'll take care of an elderly person for Christmas," "I'll cook food and set the table for an elderly person" - there have been many similar proposals on online forums recently. Probably the vast majority of them are fantastic breaks of the heart, which should be praised and taken as a positive voice and an act of pre-Christmas help to others. Unfortunately, there are situations where Internet help, or even... neighborhood help, is an attempt to take advantage of the opportunity to enter someone's home and steal.

- I don't want to accuse good-hearted people of bad intentions, but among the hundreds of wonderful volunteers there are also, unfortunately, black sheep, who are motivated not by the desire to help, but by the desire to get information about whether the senior is rich or has money. Scammers, under the guise of helping, get into apartments and verify whether the person has money put aside, whether he or she has valuable things in the house, etc. Unfortunately, recently we've been getting a lot of information about the fact that there are more scams using the grandson, policeman or simply robberies on the elderly," says Detective Malgorzata Marczulewska.

Importantly, sometimes scammers, to establish credibility, join associations or organizations that help seniors to get into apartments.

- Sometimes it's even social workers who take advantage of a senior's infirmity to gain information about the elderly person's assets or the elderly person's mental, physical and cognitive state," says Detective Marczulewska.

Appeal: don't let strangers into your home

What other situations in the context of the elderly do detectives and services encounter during the holidays?

According to Detective Margaret Marczulewska, investigations in recent weeks show that the thief did not always turn out to be the person who visited the senior citizen.

- Sometimes it was simply a relay of information. Is it worth going into such an apartment? Is it worth calling such a senior citizen? Is the senior susceptible to fraud, is he or she fully aware or perhaps not fully? Does he have a family? Of course, it will be a cliché if we tell seniors: don't let strangers into your home and don't give them too much information, but this is the basis of security. We also appeal to NGOs, associations, foundations and social welfare centers to thoroughly verify who will visit seniors in the run-up to Christmas," says Detective Malgorzata Marczulewska.

Many cases go neither to the police nor to detectives.

- Unfortunately, we note that more and more often scams are hidden because families are ashamed to report them. There was a situation in recent days when a family came to the detectives to ask for help, and did not go to the police because they were afraid of being misjudged. This order must be followed: any such situation must be reported to the police," says Detective Malgorzata Marczulewska.

Source: press mat.