At the end of August this year, Lubań police officers received a report of a crime filed by an employee of a local public institution. The officers:
The findings showed that an unidentified man had thrown stones at a municipal surveillance camera installed on a building. The incident was recorded and then handed over to the police. Fortunately, the surveillance cameras were not damaged.
As it turned out, the would-be vandal was completely unconcerned by the recording in question. At the end of October—as if nothing had happened—he went to a stationery shop, where he paid with a 200-zloty banknote bearing the word “souvenir.” The shop assistant realized that he had been defrauded only while counting the day’s takings.
The 31-year-old was arrested.
This is not the first case of this kind in Lubań. We recently reported on a similar one. “On October 20 this year, the duty officer at the Lubań police station received a report about a man who made purchases at one of the stores in Lubań, paying for them with a probably counterfeit 200-zloty banknote, and then left the scene,” asp. szt. Justyna Bujakiewicz-Rodzeń, press officer of the District Police Headquarters in Lubań, reported at the time. “Road traffic officers who arrived at the scene and were near the store arrested the man suspected in the case.”
It emerged that the same man had tried to pay with a counterfeit banknote—the word “souvenir,” which means “memento” in French, had been printed on the money—at a newsstand.
The banknotes were secured, and the 61-year-old was charged with “attempted fraud by obtaining a financial benefit and causing another person to make an unfavorable disposition of property.”
Both arrested men now face a sentence of between six months and as much as eight years in prison.
