this scam targeting elderly drivers is back in the Auterive sector

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It's a scam which seems to be making a comeback in recent months in Lauragais. Last week, a person was a victim ofrearview mirror scam while she was traveling on the D820in the Auterive sector.

” It's a phenomenon which seems to reappear. At least one other case had already been recorded a few weeks ago,” warns the Villefranche-de-Lauragais gendarmerie company, which therefore calls on the population to be vigilant.

What is the rearview mirror scam?

“It is mainly the elderly who are targeted”confides an officer, before explaining the thugs' modus operandi: “The victim is approached by a person who accuses him of having hit his vehicle a few minutes earlier. The latter will give confidence to your targetthen asks him to make an observation. That's when he fakes a call to his insurer. At the end of the line is actually an accomplice. »

Faced with the high amount announced by the interlocutor, the crook then offers an amicable settlement to the motorist who is invited to pay a smaller sum from hand to hand as compensation for this damage, which is however completely fictitious. ” In general, it's still a big amount. We are not on a €50 or €100 note. For the fact which was recorded in the Auterive sector, we were around €1,000 or even a little more», informs the gendarme.

A scam “as old as time”

This is not the first time that victims of this scam have been identified in Haute-Garonne . In December 2022, the departmental gendarmerie group already warned about this “scam as old as time”which had caused several victims at that time. A few days later, a team of criminals was arrested in Cazères.

In spring 2023, this time it is on the side of Lauragais audois and more particularly Castelnaudaryet Bramthat several cases had been recorded. More recently, in the Pyrenees-Orientales a lady had also been the target of an attempted rear-view mirror scam. But sensing a trap, she managed to call the police and have the crooks arrested.

The gendarmerie invites people who could be confronted with this type of attempt to theft by trickand would feel the trick coming to warn immediately call the police by dialing 17.

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