June 17, 13

NEWS / Three Greek men charged with swindling $6.64 million with fake invoices

Three men from northern Greece are facing fraud charges for allegedly stealing ˆ4.983 million ($6.64 million) with bogus invoices. The supposed scam lasted for over a decade, and involved the alleged fraudsters impersonating dozens of farmers to claim payments for agricultural products that had never been produced.

The three men are a 47-year old rural cooperative administrator, a 58-year old accountant and another 36-year old man, whose house was used as storage space for the reams of phony invoices. Police were quoted by The Greek Reporter as saying that the hoax took place in and around the city of Edessa, located in the northern Greek province of Central Macedonia, over the course of 11 years.

The farmers whose tax data was allegedly being used for the production of the fraudulent invoices were reportedly unaware of the ruse. Overall, the tax data of 357 individuals, many of whom were not real farmers, was including in the invoices, investigators said.

The purported chiselers reportedly sent the invoices for non-existent agricultural products to various departments and also collected the farmers’ tax refunds.

Police are continuing to investigate the matter, and will be sending the results of their investigation to the Public Prosecutor of the Misdemeanors Court of Veria, also located in the region of Central Macedonia.