Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

POLICE

Fake granddaughter rips off couple in huge fraud

An elderly Zurich husband and wife were swindled out of 400,000 francs by a woman pretending to be their granddaughter in one of the largest such scams on record in Switzerland, police said on Monday.

Published: 25 March 2013 21:07 CET
Fake granddaughter rips off couple in huge fraud

The couple, in their 70s, received a call in February from a woman posing as their granddaughter and claiming she was in financial difficulty, Zurich police said in a statement.

Over several weeks, the woman convinced the couple to hand over a total of 400,000 francs ($422,000) to a friend of hers, police said.

The couple did not realise they had been duped until mid-March, when they contacted their real granddaughter to ask why they hadn't heard back from her in a while, only to find out she had never asked them for any money.

The couple then reported the scam to the police who are now investigating the case.

"This is certainly the biggest such case on record in Zurich, and perhaps in Switzerland," Zurich police spokeswoman Judith Hödl told AFP.

She said these types of grandparent scams or emergency scams —  where someone posing as family pretends to be in desperate need of money to trick elderly people out of their savings — have long been a problem in the Swiss financial capital.

"There were more of these cases ten years ago," she said.

"The situation has improved some since we have tried to warn people of the danger," she said.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.
For members

ZURICH

Growth spurt: What Zurich needs to do to accommodate 2 million residents

Switzerland's biggest city Zurich is becoming more densely populated. With the population expected to pass the 2 million mark in the coming years authorities are devising plans to make it liveable for new residents.

Published: 29 April 2024 15:08 CEST
Growth spurt: What Zurich needs to do to accommodate 2 million residents

At the end of 2023, over 1.6 million people lived in Zurich, Switzerland’s most populous canton.

But this number is far from static.

The population is continuing to grow — so much so, that it will reach the 2-million mark in the coming years, cantonal authorities said in a press release.

This means an increase of around 450,000 people within the next two decades — a 28-percent growth rate, which is “significantly higher than the Swiss average.”

The primary reason for this hike, accounting for 49 percent of the increase, is immigration, followed by births (44 percent) and, to a lesser degree (7 percent), people moving to Zurich from other Swiss regions

On one hand, this is good news because “it is evidence of the canton’s attractiveness and economic prosperity,” authorities pointed out.

On the other, however, this demographic evolution will create a number of new problems and exacerbate the already existing ones.

That is why “strategic decisions are needed on how to handle challenges facing various areas,”  cantonal officials said.

‘Dealing with consequences’

With this ‘growth spurt,’ Zurich will experience many of the same challenges as Switzerland on the whole will, as demographers are expecting the country’s population to swell to 10 million (from the current 9 million) people in the coming years. 

Just as the federal government has started to think about the best ways to prepare the country’s infrastructure for the growing numbers, Zurich’s authorities too will be “shaping this growth” and “dealing with its consequences.”

To achieve this goal, they have launched the ‘Growth 2050” project to begin in the summer, which will  examine “which approach is most suitable for strategically addressing the challenges ahead,” according to the press release.

What exactly does this mean?

While the project’s findings will not be made public until 2027, authorities will have to ensure that Zurich’s infrastructure, such as housing, public transport, as well as school and healthcare systems, will not crumble under pressure, but be able to function optimally — from both the financial and practical perspectives — in the new context.

While all these areas are important, in Zurich’s case, housing appears to be a particular problem as more residents move into the canton.

With  tens of thousands of foreign nationals having settled in Zurich in the past few years, for instance, affordable housing had become scarcer — a situation that has continued to deteriorate and is expected to grow worse as more residents continue to arrive in the future.

READ ALSO: Zurich hit by affordable housing shortage amid record-high immigration

SHOW COMMENTS