Two elderly women were scammed out of around €7,000 and gold worth €8,000 on Thursday.

According to a police statement on Friday, the perpetrators were part of the recurrent ‘doctor’ scam whereby criminals target elderly persons by phone, and ask them to pay large sums of money because allegedly a person close to them has been injured in an accident and is in urgent need of surgery or medical care.

Police reported that the two new victims of the fraud, aged 79 and 80, in Nicosia and Limassol respectively, were told over the phone that their daughters had been injured and urgently needed to undergo surgery, at a cost of €90,000.

The two women were taken in by the story and gave the money and jewellery to unknown Greek-speaking persons who came to their homes.

According to the police, the 79-year-old woman gave away a sum of €4,000 and gold worth between €8,000 and €10,000, while the 80-year-old gave the scammers a sum of €2,500 to €3,000 and gold of an unknown value.