Police raided more than 100 strip clubs in Polish cities at the weekend, resulting in 22 arrests. Those detained face a total of 400 charges, including of being part of an organised crime gang that drugged and defrauded up to several thousand clients, including one who lost a million zloty (€218,200).
Around a quarter of the venues functioned until 2014 as part of the Cocomo chain, a notorious string of strip clubs that was closed following growing reports of scams in which clients – many of them foreign visitors to Poland – lost large sums of money after apparently being drugged.
Hundreds of men claim to have been drugged and scammed out money at Polish strip clubs, with losses often reaching thousands of dollars. Foreign tourists are a particular target.
But none of the cases has ever reached court, writes @Robert_Socha https://t.co/5fctC2eHU5
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) January 1, 2020
The people arrested are suspected of “participating in an organised crime group whose members conducted fraud and robbery on clients of go-go clubs”, with three of them suspected of leading the gang and of money laundering, said Iwona Jurkiewicz of the Central Bureau of Investigation, quoted by TVN.
Prosecutors say that the group worked by offering patrons drinks containing psychoactive substances and then taking advantage of their inability to make sound decisions by, for example, charging higher amounts at payment terminals or obtaining repeated payments.
As many as several thousand customers may have been affected, who each lost between a few thousand and a million zloty, Jurkiewicz added. Some had daily spending limits changed and even loans taken out on their mobile phones, with the money then being spent in the club in the next few hours.
The group operated at 22 clubs in Warsaw, Kraków, Poznań, Wrocław, Gdańsk, Sopot, Lublin, Rzeszów, Łódź, Katowice, Bydgoszcz and Zakopane, said Jurkiewicz. It is also accused of engaging in activities designed to disguise the origin of illegally obtained funds.
Zatrzymano w sumie 22 osoby, oszukanych mogło zostać nawet kilka tysięcy klientów.https://t.co/euUIbdmBON
— TVN Warszawa (@tvnwarszawa) May 31, 2022
The raids, ordered by the national public prosecutor’s office, followed a lengthy investigation and involved around 500 officers. Police uncovered a headquarters functioning in Kraków, from which dozens of clubs were coordinated and CCTV images from around the country were recorded.
Officers secured eight servers, computer equipment and more than 4,000 discs containing CCTV footage as well as accounting documentation. They also confiscated items amounting to 1.2 million zloty (€262,000) in the form of money in various currencies, three cars, luxury watches and gold jewellery.
All but three of those detained have been placed in temporary detention. If convicted, they face up to 12 years imprisonment.
Main image credit: Kamila Kubat / Agencja Gazeta
Ben Koschalka is a translator and senior editor at Notes from Poland. Originally from Britain, he has lived in Kraków since 2005.
