Two Swedish citizens, one which was born in Eritrea, are now wanted for murder, with the two suspects belonging to a group of swindlers who scammed 150 Swedish pensioners.
District prosecutor Linda Wiking told the Samnytt news portal they have submitted an indictment to the Gothenburg District Court at the end of March. The indictment charges 14 people, ten men and four women, for scamming 139 Swedish pensioners out of 17 million kronor (€1.6 million) using overseas call centers.
The two primary suspects in the indictment are 24-year-old Nathnael Merkonen, born in Eritrea as Natu Binjam but a Swedish citizen with a new name since 2015; he has a criminal record. The other man is a 23-year-old born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and a father from Guinea-Bissau, and he has no prior record.
The two men employed several Swedes, with a fully Swedish background, at illegal call centers in countries including Cyprus, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Malta, Thailand, and the U.S.
Both suspects are also now under investigation for murdering two Swedish citizens in Ethiopia. There have been “no signs of life” from the reported victims since March 2022.
The illegal call center operations are conducted from countries such as Cyprus, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Malta, Thailand and the USA. And the two men have several Swedes, with a fully Swedish background, employed at the foreign call centers where the fraud operations are systematically conducted.
But during the course of the investigation, even more serious accusations emerge against the two main defendants. They are suspected of having murdered two Swedish citizens in Ethiopia.
District Attorney Linda Wiking says that the murdered citizens are men, and that they were born in the late 1990s.
“The plaintiffs have been missing,” she tells Samnytt.
“I don’t know if both have been reported missing, but there have been no signs of life from them since March 2022.”
Prosecutors say that Ethiopia is one of the countries where the two murder suspects allegedly had one of their call centers — even though that particular country does not appear in the fraud case. The two victim were in that country to work at the call center operation.
“The idea was that they would work there,” says Linda Wiking.
While in Ethiopia, the two employees were murdered.
On Wednesday, Nathnael Merkonen and the 23-year-old man were arrested and charged with murder, but the two have a long history of being charged for fraud. They are also being charged with kidnapping and rape, but the details of the investigation are being kept confidential, so much remains unknown.
“Before we started questioning people and moving around a bit, we wanted to be sure that they were detained with restrictions in our case. So that we simply control who they can have contact with,” the prosecutor told Samnytt.
“What I have come up with is the basis for the suspicions, partly interrogation data. Then we also have a certain film sequence and various data that tell us where people have been,” says Linda Wiking.
The prosecutor would not disclose what was seen on the film or provide other evidence.
“We should hear from people. If I go into too much detail, it will be difficult to know whether those people have the information themselves, or whether they have read it in the media, said Wiking.
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