A 79-year-old pensioner in Sassocorvaro, central Italy, lost €10,000 on Wednesday after receiving a text message that appeared to come from her bank’s security service, according to the Carabinieri. The message warned of a suspicious €1,500 transaction and urged her to call a number, where a man claiming to be a police officer convinced her that her account was under attack and that she must immediately transfer her savings to a “safe” account. She complied at her local branch, only later realising the account belonged to the fraudsters.

That same week, authorities across Latin America issued parallel alerts about schemes that rely on the same mechanics of impersonation and urgency. In São Paulo, the state public security secretariat reported that criminals were placing phone calls and sending messages in its name, falsely summoning citizens to give a deposition about the misuse of their data for credit-card fraud. During the calls, the scammers extracted personal details later used to open bank accounts and take out loans. The secretariat stressed it never initiates such contacts and urged anyone targeted to file a police report.

In Mexico, the federal anti-corruption secretariat warned on 2 July that a network was using the names and titles of real public servants—including its own—to extort mainly older adults. The fraudsters, contacting victims by phone, WhatsApp or email, demanded payments for fictitious services such as expediting official paperwork, recovering lost funds or avoiding tax penalties, often backing their claims with forged documents bearing government logos. The secretariat reiterated that all its services are free and asked the public to report any such approaches. Separately, the state-owned electricity company CFE alerted users to fake SMS messages threatening immediate power cuts unless a payment was made via a fraudulent link.

In Argentina, a 70-year-old woman in La Plata was pushed to the ground and robbed of her mobile phone on 29 June; within minutes, the thief used her Mercado Pago account to transfer 70,000 pesos. In Bucaramanga, Colombia, police arrested a 26-year-old woman accused of threatening a foreign national with a machete to steal his phone, then rescuing her from a crowd that had surrounded her. Both cases illustrate a pattern in which stolen devices become gateways to financial accounts, a risk highlighted by investigators in the La Plata case, who are examining whether the attacker bypassed security measures or already possessed the victim’s credentials.

Investigations are ongoing in all jurisdictions. Italian Carabinieri are tracing the destination of the €10,000 transfer. Mexican authorities have provided hotlines for victims and noted that a recent legislative proposal seeks to criminalise identity theft with prison terms of four to eight years, with aggravated penalties when the victim is elderly. Across the affected regions, officials are repeating the same advice: no legitimate institution will ever demand an urgent money transfer or personal data over the phone, and any such request should be ignored and reported.