Houses spied on

Citizens warn of sinister gang on the internet

Fear of burglars is currently rife in the Kremstal.

(Bild: Lucky Business, stock.adobe.com)

"Watch out, watch out, watch out" - a resident of St. Marien (Upper Austria) issues an urgent warning on social media about gangs of fraudsters. Two strangers had been scouting out her house - under the pretext that they were only looking for cars for sale. The article is not an isolated case. The "Krone" investigated the rumors.

Residents of the Krems Valley are currently warning each other several times on online platforms about groups moving around. This is also the case in Piberbach: "One rings the bell, the other scouts around. A phone call is made after every house. Be careful," writes one user. Mayor Markus Mitterbaur's desk has also been hit by the issue: "Last week, I received a message from a local citizen saying that people were hanging around and ringing the doorbell with the scam that they were hungry and thirsty. People who come along then scout around," reports the head of the village.

"People ring the doorbell and behave strangely"
His counterpart from Bad Hall, around ten kilometers away, has heard similar things: "People ring the doorbell and behave strangely. The police know about it and are trying to get a grip on it," says local chief Bernhard Ruf. So what is the truth of the rumors - are there really incidents involving the aforementioned fraudsters? Not criminally, because none have been reported so far: "We are not aware of any specific break-ins," says the regional police headquarters reassuringly.

I have received a message that people are hanging around and ringing the doorbell with the scam that they are hungry or thirsty.

Markus Mitterbaur, Bürgermeister von Piberbach

Don't let anyone into your house
Christian Schmidseder, head of the theft group at the provincial criminal investigation department, is also unaware of any current criminal series, but says: "We have beggars out and about all year round. They're dropped off somewhere and they go round one settlement after another. They are mainly Romanian nationals who go from house to house and also commit thefts on occasion," says the chief investigator. His advice: "Never let anyone into your house and call the police."

Only recently, investigators caught the perpetrators of an actual series of burglaries: six young men, mainly from Wels and the surrounding area, have been breaking into schools and kindergartens in rows since November - the "Krone" reported. Burglaries in apartments and houses, on the other hand, have decreased on a long-term average across Austria. In 2014, there were still 17,110 reports, in 2023 there were 7,647.