Phony policemen milk tourists of ‘fake’ cash
Athens police have mounted a search for four men who prey on Asian tourists by posing as plainclothes officers and supposedly checking their wallets for forged banknotes, a report said yesterday. As soon as they laid hands on the tourists’ money, the impostors ran away, according to the Eleftherotypia daily, which said at least two such attacks had been recorded over the past seven days in the city center. A Japanese couple lost 570 euros and 70,000 yen (530 euros), while another Asian tourist was robbed of $1,200 dollars (970 euros). Meanwhile, in a variation on the same trick, four men in police uniforms yesterday stopped two lorry drivers carrying cargoes of cigarettes near the Afidnes toll-post on the Athens-to-Lamia highway. The tricksters locked the drivers in a van and drove off with the lorries, which were later found abandoned but unplundered in western Athens.
