TALLINN - A taxi driver in the southern Estonian university town of Tartu on Monday rescued an elderly woman from scammers after she, believing the scammers' story, had decided to take money to them to Riga.
The taxi driver received an order to a residential area in Tartu, where he was to pick up an elderly woman and drive her to Latvia, spokespeople for the South Prefecture of the Police and Border Guard Board said.
While the woman was traveling with the money to the neighboring country, her loved one informed the police that the elderly woman had received a phone call from scammers that same day, saying that her daughter had been in an accident, needed surgery, and needed cash urgently to pay for it.
While it was initially thought that the woman had gone to a local hospital in Tartu, this suspicion was quickly ruled out. The woman, who had disappeared with the money, was searched for by both her grandchild and the police. The relative managed to contact the woman by phone and it turned out that she had reached Latvia during that time and still had 12 kilometers to travel to Riga.
After the intervention of the police and the relative, the taxi driver also realized that the woman in his car had probably fallen into the hands of scammers, whereupon the driver turned the car around and drove the woman back to Tartu. On the way back, the scammers bombarded both the taxi driver and the woman with several phone calls, but neither of them answered the calls.
The woman returned home with the money shortly before midnight.
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