Beware of swindlers! Criminals stole 65 million with illegal money exchange

If you travel to Hungary and, for some reason, you cannot use or want to use your credit card, so you need to exchange your currency to Hungarian forint, make sure to always do so in a licensed centre.

The Hungarian police have found that the so-called “rid-deal” method of swindling money can be traced back for quite a few years, which is exactly what they did.

This is what to look out for

According to Origo, the “rip-deal” method is based on the skill of sleight of hand. The perpetrators offer foreigners to help them exchange money for a much preferable rate than that of a licensed centre.

If their victim agrees to the exchange, they would then give the victim the money they promised. This bundle of money is real, and they even allow the victim to check and count it.

After this is done, the criminals somehow switch the bundle of real money to another one that contains mostly fake cash. The victim thinks they got the money they wanted because they just counted it, but in reality, the swindlers took the original sum of money for a bundle of fake money.

Police.hu reported that this type of crime was very popular between 2013 and 2015, and the Hungarian authorities have managed to catch many criminals connected to a series of crimes of the same kind.

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New developments

However, last year, this method of swindling money from unsuspecting victims surfaced again, and the police have started to widen the scope of the investigation.

This proved fruitful as the authorities discovered that some of the criminals were not arrested. Police.hu wrote that it seems they have recently managed to tie off all loose ends when they confiscated €300,000 in counterfeit money.

According to police.hu, the Hungarian police found out that back in 2014, Zsolt T. and his partner, Teodor C. I., a Romanian citizen, agreed to find wealthy individuals among their acquaintances and agree with them to exchange money for them for a much better rate.

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In one of their first swindles, they managed to get hold of 9 million forints (€25,000 according to current value) for the €30,000 they were offering.

They exchanged the money and then managed to switch the real bundle of euros to fake ones, taking all the money from the deal.

The Hungarian authorities also found out that the Romanian Teodor C. I. committed armed robbery and that the Belgian authorities are also looking for him for crimes he committed there.

He is currently in detention in Hungary but will soon be sent to the Belgian authorities.

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Source: Police.hu, origo.hu