A 65-year-old man who was considered by Greek police as one of the masters of financial crime in Greece, was arrested on Tuesday.
The man police has called “the greatest Greek swindler” is Stavros Panagiotopoulos. He was arrested in Athens having been on the “wanted” list since 2010.
In 2007, Panagiotopoulos along with seven accomplices had managed to sell a piece of land at the “rich” Athens suburb Palaio Psychiko for 2.5 million euros by using forged documents. Panagiotopoulos did not have ownership of the real estate property, neither did any of his accomplices.
There was a warrant for Panagiotopoulos’ arrest since 2010. He is charged for forming and running a criminal organization, repeated fraud, forgery and complicity to such crimes.
Last November, Panagiotopoulos had sold the same villa at Palaio Psychiko four times and another one at Voula to unsuspecting buyers. He received about 700,000 euros from the five sales.
After the particular fraud, police arrested six of his accomplices (three men and three women) but not a 53-year-old man who was part of the gang.
The members of the gang, and particularly a 45-year-old woman who is in custody, were spotting vacant luxury villas on sale that belonged to expatriates mainly. They were approaching the realtors or owners and convincing them to take the brokerage or representation, thus acquiring personal information and access to private and public documents (copies of title deeds, powers of attorney, surveys).
After that, they were arranging appointments with prospective buyers and presented members of the gang as property owners using fake IDs and data of the actual owners.
The fraud was exposed after a prospective buyer of a Psychiko house had given 8,600 euros as a down payment and was asked for another 8,000 for file expenses. The victim searched the tax office information on the property and found out that even though the property was supposedly vacant, the property tax was paid. The victim of the fraud reported the transaction to the police, who arrested the gang members upon receiving payment from the prospective buyer.
The 65-year-old appeared in the police radar in 1994, when he stole about 3 million euros worth of state bonds from the National Bank of Greece. He was arrested a year later and according to police he had about 100,000 euros in his car with which he tried to bribe the policemen who had arrested him. A month later he escaped under unknown circumstances during his transfer to court.
Panagiotopoulos was arrested in November 1996 and in 1997 he was incarcerated. He was released from prison in 2006 and in 2007 it was found that he was involved in yet another fraud, but police had no evidence to arrest him again.
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