The fraud involves callers pretending to be relatives and feigning an emergency – for example, that they have caused a traffic accident and killed someone. The people who receive these calls are usually elderly, hence the name.

The victims are then often contacted by supposed police officers or officials who claim that only the payment of a large amount of money can prevent their son, daughter or grandchild from going to prison. This is just one of many fraudulent scenarios.

Police said the arrested suspects are aged between 22 and 63. Four of them are said to have called victims and initiated the fraud. The others acted as collectors of the money.

Three suspected call centres, from which the victims were allegedly contacted, were shut down in the German city of Frankfurt, in Austria and in Poland, as part of the police operation.

In one case a 26-year-old woman from Frankfurt is alleged to have committed fraud in Slovakia. She pretended to be a police officer or bank employee in order to convince victims that their money was no longer safe in their accounts. They were told to withdraw the money and hand it over.

According to police reports, the operations took place between mid-September and the end of October this year.

They involved investigative authorities from all of Germany’s federal states, as well as from Austria, Poland, Switzerland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

The operations were coordinated by the Berlin State Criminal Police Office.

In addition to the arrests, evidence was seized during the searches, including laptops, mobile phones, watches and jewellery, along with a quantity of drugs.

-dpa