World News | An Alert Polish Taxi Driver Averts a Scam in Which an Elderly Woman Could Have Lost About USD 36,000

Warsaw, Mar 12 (AP) An alert tax driver prevented a scam in which an elderly woman would have lost the equivalent of about USD 36,000 for a phony bailout of relatives from jail, police in southeastern Poland said.

According to a police statement, a caller in the city of Rzeszow instructed the driver last week to collect a package from an elderly woman and deliver it to an address that would be sent to him. He was to be paid 2,000 zlotys (USD 510) for the delivery.

Also Read | Pakistan Building Collapse: Nine Killed, Two Injured After Three-Storey Building Collapses in Multan City (Watch Video).

The driver collected the package from a 76-year-old woman and was on his way but became suspicious when the client kept calling and asking if everything had gone well and if he had picked up the package.

He contacted the local police, and the officer on duty "immediately knew it was a fraud” and told the driver to “turn around and come straight to the police station in Rzeszów.”

Also Read | NASA Crew 7 Returns to Earth After Spending 197 Days Aboard International Space Station.

The police said the parcel was a carefully taped up shoe box that contained 140,000 Polish zlotys (USD 36,000). The package was returned to the woman.

According to the police, a caller had told the woman that her son-in-law had fatally hit a pedestrian with his car and the money was urgently needed to bail him out of jail.

The woman later told the police that she had heard about such scams but the caller was so persuasive, she believed him.

The police did not identify the woman or the taxi driver. (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)