Dutch police have started a large-scale campaign to flush out hundreds of suspected fraudsters targeting mostly elderly people, often by posing as police officers.

The campaign consists of the blurred photos of 100 suspected fraudsters plastered on billboards along motorways, petrol stations, and supermarkets across the country, as well as in ads on television and online. The people featured in the photos have two weeks to turn themselves into the police before the blurring is removed.

There were 1,300 incidents involving fake policemen who dupe people into parting with their bank cards and other valuables last year, and cases involving helpdesk fraud, where people are conned into revealing their banking login data, ran into over 100,000, police say.

The people featured in the photos are “errand boys” recruited by criminal organisations, police cyber expert Toanne Spoormans told broadcaster NOS.

“They can be vulnerable youngsters, with learning difficulties or a drug problem who can be easily talked into. But a good number of them know exactly what they are doing ”, she said. They are usually first offenders and therefore more difficult to find, she said.

The campaign was dubbed “Game Over” because perpetrators call the scam the “F (fraud) game. The impact of the “game” on the victims, who are often elderly and too ashamed to report the incident, is horrendous, Spoormans said.

“Many elderly victims lose all confidence in people and official institutions. They are afraid to go out on their own and don’t want to open the door to anyone. Some even decide to go into a home because they think they can no longer look after themselves,” she said.

Police said the large-scale issuing of photographs of the “lower layer” of the criminal organisations is justified and that the public prosecution office had approved each case.

Other investigations into the networks behind the fraud are also ongoing, police said.