A man in his 20s has been arrested in Warsaw after banks in France and Poland laid a trap for him and foiled a bid to fraudulently transfer EUR 600,000 (USD 800,000) to a newly opened Polish account, police said Thursday.
"The man was arrested at the bank in Warsaw where he had gone to collect EUR 600,000 from an account he had opened a few days earlier," said police spokeswoman Anna Kedzierzawska.
"The bank contacted us because the wire transfer request had been shown to be fake," she said.
The suspect had a French passport "which appears to be a fake", said Kedzierzawska.
According to the passport, the suspect's name is Elie Rafik and he is 27 years old, she added.
"The bank in France, from which the money was to be transferred, had doubts as to the transfer order's authenticity and contacted the bank in Poland to warn it that someone was going to try to defraud a French company, which was unaware of the entire operation," said Kedzierzawska, who refused to give the names of the two banks or the French company involved.
The suspect arrived in Poland on February 12, according to the Warsaw police. When he was arrested, he was "about to leave the country and had already paid his hotel bill," Kedzierzawska said.
He faces 10 years in jail if convicted of fraud.
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