Police have confirmed that an extradition process is underway in Greece for a man who is accused of having defrauded around 265 people in Cyprus out of just under €300,000.
According to prosecutors in Greece, Greek national Giorgos Krasopoulos had been posing as the representative of a French construction firm who was on the lookout for construction workers and welders in Cyprus.
He had even set up a fake office in Larnaca to make his elaborate scheme appear more realistic and to reel in hundreds of desperate unemployed workers in Cyprus.
The suspect was recently arrested in Greece but has objected to Cyprus’ extradition request and a three-month long legal proceeding is not expected to commence in Athens.
Krasopoulos and his cohorts had managed to defraud a total of €290,000 from a total of 265 unemployed people in Cyprus – conning them with promises of job opportunities in the French town of Lille.
Krasopoulos’ epic con dates back to June 2013 when Phileleftheros had first published an article about the cruel con. One of his victims had told the paper that he had paid the bogus company €1,000 in exchange for work and employment in France.
It later emerged that the company owner had been systematically defrauding people in Cyprus by promising them work at a French company in exchange for a fee.
Such was the lengths of Krasopoulos’ facade that, one time, he had collected 72 Cypriots that had paid him between €650 and €1,000 each and flew them out to France before putting them up in a hotel.
With the bill being left unattended, they were soon thrown out of the hotel forcing the Cyprus Embassy in Paris to arrange their flights back to Cyprus.
With the con exposed, Krasopoulos fled Cyprus allegedly using a fake passport and reportedly flew out to Bulgaria and then later Albania.
It is believed that Krasopoulos had defrauded around 400 people with that higher figure based on investigator suspicions of many more victims simply feeling too ashamed to come forward
Police investigators had also heard how many of his victims had been forced to borrow money from friends and relatives to pay Krasopoulos.
He was finally arrested in Greece on August 4.
Source: in-cyprus
