So far 33 victims are known, but there are probably hundreds more. Some victims were robbed of more than a million forints in one night.
The Hungarian Bureau of Investigation (NNI) is investigating a group of criminals who defrauded foreign tourists in the capital’s nightclubs by making them pay several times the price of their drinks, for fraud and other crimes – says a press release issued by the police.
The female members of the group are suspected of targeting their victims through a dating phone app. The men were usually wealthy foreigners who were met by female prostitutes and then taken to bars for drinks.
There, despite the fact that the men’s drinking was usually minimal, the women used them to pay for the alcohol they ordered. However, the amounts displayed at POS terminals were not at all proportional to the number of drinks consumed.
There were cases of customers taking advantage of their drunkenness by repeatedly withdrawing money from their credit cards.
Some victims were robbed of more than a million forints in one night.
The first operation was carried out in February, when investigators raided ten addresses in Dunaharaszti and Budapest at the same time. Five men and five women were arrested, four of whom have since been detained.
Over the past four months, the NNI has gathered further evidence and on 17 June arrested three more perpetrators: two women and one man. The 34-year-old woman from Göd and the 47-year-old woman from Budapest were responsible for the racketeering and deception of 29 men. The youngest was the owner of one of the bars, while the older was an enforcer. The man worked as a waiter and barman.
