A gang that combined climbing skills with the gift of the gab to make more than €440,000 out of cat burglaries and phone scams has been broken following a series of arrests in the Greater Athens region, authorities said Wednesday.
A police statement said eight people, including the alleged ringleader, were arrested late Monday and early Tuesday in the Athens districts of Kallithea and Petralona, as well as on the capital’s western fringes.
Police said the gang is believed to have been active since at least October last year, and is linked with 44 housebreakings and 14 cases of phone fraud. The suspects either had never tabled income tax returns – with some not even having a tax registration number – or declared zero income, the police statement noted.
It said the suspects “had particular skills in climbing,” which enabled them to burgle flats by pulling themselves up onto balconies or up lightshafts.
When not housebreaking, the suspects phoned elderly people, posing as power company workers, accountants or tax officials, and allegedly talked them into leaving cash and valuables they kept at home outdoors on various pretexts: To have them supposedly registered with tax authorities, or to avoid the purported risk of electrocution due to a wiring malfunction.
