A 70-year-old man from Skopje has reported to the city police that he was defrauded of 720,000 denars - around 11,700 euros. Not through a hacked profile, not through a crypto platform, not through a text message from an unknown country. Through a conversation with a man who told him he needed help to treat his own son abroad.

The excuse was built so that refusing would sound cruel. According to the report, a person with the initials A. "N" repeatedly asked for money, first for the child's treatment abroad. When that ran its course, a second excuse arrived - a water bill that needed settling. Between 18 January and the end of February 2026, the sum reached 720,000 denars.

The report was filed on 5 September at 6pm. That means roughly six months passed between the last payment and the trip to the police. Six months in which a man waited for the money to come back on its own, and then understood that it would not.

The interior ministry says measures are being taken to clarify and fully document the case. A formulation we all know by heart, and one that has never returned a single denar to anyone.

This is a fraud that needs no technology. There is no fake platform with fictional profits, no broker calling from abroad. There is only access to a man who holds savings and has nobody to check with. Older people are the target precisely because they usually have both of those things at once.

After every case like this the police advise caution. The advice is sound, but it arrives once the money has vanished. The question no statement ever answers is a different one: whose job is it to warn a 70-year-old before the first payment rather than after the last?