The Romanian Police is warning Romanians from all over the country about a new method used by people of bad faith to deceive them, this being called by the authorities "the COVID method", it is now replacing the "accident method" as the favorite for deceiving the Romanians.
"Part of its members have acquired specialization, two of the defendants, in 2018, being sent to court under the aspect of committing the "accident method" fraud crime, one as the author, being incarcerated in the penitentiary, and the other as an accomplice, being released, and two other defendants being known with criminal records for the crime of complicity in attempted fraud.
Later, the injured person was presented with the unreal situation in which his health condition is very serious, with the lungs affected in a large proportion (80%), likely to create a state of panic for the injured person due to the possibility of the death of a close person and stated that the only possibility to stay alive is to be connected to a ventilation device, but that the medical unit does not have a medical ventilation device to which he can be connected, or that he could be connected only after a long period of time. Then he presented a solution, in the sense of personally purchasing the ventilation device, on which occasion he specified that it costs between 6.000 - 15.000 euros and requested the injured person to communicate to him the sums of money at his disposal (savings, funeral money, jewelry, money from bank accounts) and that he can offer.
Next, if the victim had a larger amount of money (they refused to continue the steps to actually obtain the money when the victim had amounts smaller than approximately 1000 euros), the conversation was taken over by another defendant, who it is recommended to be an employee of the health insurance company/medical staff and, under the pretext of concluding a contract with the health insurance company for the purchase of the medical device, obtain from the injured person the identification data, as well as his address. Next, the injured person's address was sent by text message to a defendant who was at large, who went to the injured person's address in order to collect the amount of money. While the accomplices were going to the address, the victim was kept on the phone, and if they were late, they asked him, in order to buy time, to dictate the series of banknotes."
