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CRIME

Residents in Switzerland urged to avoid new scams

Fraudulent schemes of all kinds have been circulating in Switzerland for a long time. These are the latest ones.

Residents in Switzerland urged to avoid new scams
Don't fall victim to scamming attempts. Photo by CardMapr.nl on Unsplash

Scammers are very imaginative — and increasingly more sophisticated as well — about tricking their victims into parting with their money.

These are the two latest ones spreading throughout Switzerland right now that should set off alarm bells in your head.

Suspicious SMS messages, allegedly from the Post Office

Scammers have been sending thousands of fraudulent messages to Swiss mobile phone numbers, posing as the Post Office.

They inform recipients that a package addressed to them is being held at the post office and can’t be delivered “due to unclear address information.”

A service fee of 27 cents will be charged for the new distribution, which can be paid online by credit card.

(A variation of this scam has also been sent to email addresses, allegedly from DHL delivery service).

This message should raise suspicion for two reasons, according to Tobias Lang, a spokesperson for the Post Office. 

One, because the provided link doesn’t end with ‘post.ch’, ‘poste.ch’, ‘posta.ch’, or ‘swisspost.ch’.

And two, the Swiss Post Office “never asks its customers to provide personal security information such as passwords or credit card data by email, SMS or telephone.”

Also, the amount of 27 cents is strange. It was set deliberately low, so that as many people as possible will pay it without becoming suspicious about it, Lang said.

Even if it only a small number of people are fooled into responding, this scam “already becomes profitable for the hackers. Because sending SMS costs almost nothing, the profit should be achieved relatively quickly,” according to the Federal Office for Cybersecurity. 

The radio and television fee scam

All households in Switzerland must  pay the annual television tax of 335 francs, so invoices for this fee may not immediately (or ever) raise any suspicions.

Except that these bills don’t come from the official collecting agency, Serafe, but rather from fraudsters.

However, even though at first glance these invoices appear to be legitimate, if you are vigilant you will see that they come not from Serafe, but from Searfe — a deliberate misspelling and a sure sign that you should disregard this bill and not pay it.

You can see the list of all current scams circulating in Switzerland here

What should you do (and not do) if you receive either of the above-mentioned scam attempts?

First and foremost, don’t reveal any personal information and, even less so, your credit card number or any other financial details.

This advice, which comes from the Swiss Crime Prevention service, applies to all scam attempts that try to extort money from you.

READ ALSO: How to avoid the most common online scams in Switzerland
 
 

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CRIME

Mystery persists as missing Swiss paintings reappear

One of the Switzerland's top art museums announced Sunday the return of two paintings that went missing last year, refusing to provide details in a case still under investigation.

Mystery persists as missing Swiss paintings reappear

Kunsthaus Zurich offered in June 2023 a reward of 10,000 Swiss francs ($11,100) for information that could help it track one painting by Flemish painter Robert van den Hoecke and another by the Dutch Golden Age artist Dirck de Bray.

The small paintings disappeared when the Kunsthaus took down more than 700 works for cleaning and restoration after a fire broke out in August 2022.

But no trace of the two paintings could later be found.

On Sunday, the museum said only that its restoration experts had confirmed both paintings were in “good condition”, with no indication of how or when they turned up.

Because of ongoing police inquiries, “no further information will be released for the time being,” the Kunsthaus said.

Museum officials had alerted the missing works to the Art Loss Register, the world’s largest database of lost and stolen pieces.

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