A 79-year-old woman in Thessaloniki was defrauded of gold sovereigns and jewellery worth thousands of euros by scammers posing as employees of Greece’s Hellenic Electricity Distribution Network Operator (HEDNO). She left the items outside her front door on their instructions, only for them to vanish moments later.

According to the woman’s report to police last Saturday, at around 1:30 p.m. an unknown man contacted her by phone, claiming to work for HEDNO, the state-owned company responsible for managing Greece’s electricity distribution network.

Through a series of pretexts, she was persuaded to place the gold coins and jewellery she kept in her apartment in Stavroupoli into a plastic bag and leave it outside her front door, on the second floor of the building. The bag disappeared shortly afterwards.

The woman told police that 23 gold sovereigns, two gold watches, pendants, rings and other valuable gold items had been stolen. The case is being investigated by officers from the Pavlos Melas Crime Investigation and Prosecution Division.