Many of our compatriots, upon arriving in Germany, mistakenly believe that this country has no scammers, dishonest firms, or businesspeople who pursue illegal or semi-legal profit by any means necessary. We hope this article will help you avoid trouble and disappointment after moving to a new country to study or live, and will help protect you, at least to some degree, from falling into the "net" of con artists.
Today the internet is an inseparable part of modern life. Online you can shop, look for work, be entertained, meet people, and much more.
But the advantages of life online are overshadowed by online scammers who keep inventing new ways to deceive often-naive internet users. Many people wonder how to tell whether they're dealing with a scammer, and how to avoid taking the bait.
Almost every internet user has, at some point, come across a jaw-dropping offer promising extraordinary income for minimal effort — with total passivity thrown in as a bonus. Getting rich while doing nothing is everyone's dream! Every scam rests on an understanding of human psychology: fraudsters know exactly where their "victim's" weak points lie and exploit them skillfully.
Second place goes to the trustfulness of people who seek help online and, without even noticing, hand scammers everything they have. "As long as there are gullible souls in this world, deceiving them works to our advantage!!!" — a simple and enduring line from the well-known children's tale about Pinocchio and the Golden Key. Unfortunately, many people — often adults who are far from foolish — end up resembling that world-famous character.
There are many forms of online fraud, and the fraudsters' arsenal keeps growing relentlessly: phishing, online-trading scams, romance scams, "beggar" schemes, "money-mule" transfers, and more. In this article we'll focus on one case of identity theft.
The case dates back to 2015. A young man named Dmitri (name changed) came to our law firm after an unpleasant experience — he had become the victim of an online scammer.
Dmitri had come to Germany from an Eastern European country that was once part of the Soviet Union. He badly needed money and, unlike Pinocchio, wanted to find work and earn an income in a fully legal way. Like many people in his situation, he searched for work "online." His search went nowhere for a long time, and he had nearly given up hope of finding a job.
And then... a miracle!!! One "fine day," while browsing the internet, he "stumbled upon" a fellow countryman who offered him a job. "The world isn't without kind people," Dmitri thought. Fortune had smiled on our hero, and, forgetting all caution, he placed his complete trust in a total stranger he had never met in person. The two began corresponding and discussing the upcoming job. Dmitri couldn't believe his luck.
The job in question involved driving, and the prospective employer suggested registering the car in Dmitri's name. He explained that this would be more convenient for both of them, since the vehicle would be registered to a private individual who would also be driving it. Buoyed after his long, fruitless job search, the young man believed his luck had finally turned.
He handed over the personal data needed to register the car in his name to his "virtual" employer — after which all contact suddenly stopped, and the supposed employer never wrote again. And Dmitri? Our naive hero still suspected nothing was wrong. After a brief period of disappointment, he simply forgot about the whole thing...
Some time later, letters from the police started arriving demanding he "pay a fine" — for illegal parking, for speeding, and so on. Dmitri had no car, so he assumed it was a mistake — surely that couldn't happen in a country governed by the rule of law like Germany!
Under German law, in the event of an accident or a traffic violation, liability generally falls on the person to whom the vehicle is registered. Dmitri had no way to prove to the police that he hadn't been driving the car — he didn't even own a car. The police explained to the young man that since a vehicle was registered in his name, he was responsible for the traffic violations committed and was required to pay the fines by the stated deadlines. Only then did our unlucky "Pinocchio" realize he had been had...
At first the fines were small, and Dmitri paid them, but they kept coming, and the total soon rose to €1,000.
Naturally, Dmitri could no longer keep up with the ever-growing fines and, on a friend's advice, finally decided to consult a lawyer.
That's how a young man named Dmitri became a client of our law firm. The case proved more complicated than it first appeared. Our attorney filed a report with the police. During the investigation it emerged that the online scammer who had defrauded our unfortunate client was well known to the police and public prosecutor's office and had faced similar charges before. The scammer was located by police and sentenced to one year in prison. At the same time, our attorney worked to have the car's registration removed from Dmitri's name — which required documents proving ownership of the vehicle, documents which, for obvious reasons, our client did not have.
At some point, the fine notices suddenly stopped arriving, and our trusting client, without seeing the matter through to its conclusion, relaxed...
But not for long. In February 2017, Dmitri came back to our firm — this time with a speeding-fine notice from Milan.
Police forces across the EU maintain contacts that make it easy to trace the "culprit" behind an accident or violation — namely, the vehicle's registered owner. The letter, arriving two years later, came as a great shock to our client: for two years he had lived in peace, fully convinced that the scammer, now known to police, wouldn't risk breaking the law again. But the fact remained that, under the law, the car was still registered to our client, who therefore bore full liability for anything that happened involving that vehicle.
Our attorney sent a letter to the authorities in Milan explaining that the client had not been driving the vehicle, and that the submitted photographs did not prove otherwise. The next crucial step for both the attorney and the client was to get the ill-fated vehicle deregistered from Dmitri's name. As mentioned, German law does not allow a vehicle to be deregistered without documents proving ownership.
Our attorney's argument rested on the fact that the vehicle was a source of increased danger to the public, that our client had never even seen this car, and that it had only been registered to him as a result of the scammer's fraudulent actions. The arguments proved persuasive: the vehicle was deregistered, and our client could finally rest easy. The scammer was prosecuted under §263 of the German Criminal Code for fraud.
Our client, in a sense, got off relatively lightly: the scammer driving that car was never involved in a serious accident with casualties and never fled the scene of one — otherwise the consequences for Dmitri would have been far more severe, potentially involving charges under several provisions of the German Criminal Code at once. He sought a lawyer's help in time, while he was still only facing minor traffic violations punishable by administrative fines.
If someone in Germany isn't job-hunting, don't be too quick to judge them — they may simply be doing everything they can to avoid being scammed, especially since fraudsters targeting the job market have become particularly active recently. The victims of such con artists are often people looking for work online. What do these "great schemers" do? They post fake job ads on websites or send out enticing emails. Such offers typically draw a large number of applicants. The number of fake ads grows every year, and, accordingly, more and more people fall for them. Stay vigilant, and never hand your personal data to strangers.
So what should you do if you've already found yourself in such a situation? Urgently gather all the information you have and contact a lawyer without delay — don't wait until criminal proceedings are opened against you on suspicion of a crime, even one committed through mere negligence, carelessness, or ignorance of the law. Quite often, someone who considers themselves a victim of fraud has no idea that an investigation may already be underway against them on suspicion of committing a crime — one that, on some otherwise unremarkable day, can strike "like a bolt from the blue" in the form of a police summons to give a statement.
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