Female fraudster with at least 20 aliases confesses

Oslo district court, Oslo courthouse, Female fraudster Tøyen Murder 51 years in prison AmmerudOslo district court. Photo: domstolen.com

Female fraudster with at least 20 aliases confesses to 7 cases of gross fraud

A 59-year-old woman has confessed to all seven charges of committing gross fraud in Norway. The woman has been convicted of similar crimes twelve times before, and has used more than 20 aliases. The female fraudster has been active all over Scandinavia for most of her life.

The woman acknowledged guilt to everything she was charged with in Oslo district court on Tuesday. According to the Aftenposten newspaper, she has for 30 years roamed Scandinavia, defrauding priests, nuns, organists, students, and sailors.

In Sweden, she is dubbed ‘the biggest fraudster in the Nordic world’. In Denmark, she’s known as ‘the woman with the heavy suitcase’.

In court on Tuesday, she sat with her back to the witnesses, who described how she had exploited them. In recent years, she had been working under the name of Marie Madeleine Steen.

Dying , or rather lying, of cancer

In June, she will appear in court in Denmark, where she is accused of deception against Ørslev monastery, under the pseudonym Maria Hansen.

Her modus operandi is, using a false name, gaining sympathy by telling a tragic story of suffering from cancer, and having only a short time left to live.

She begs for help until her marks take pity on her and lend her money that they never get back. Previously, among her twelve convictions for such crimes, eight were in Sweden.

The preliminary last of a total of 12 convictions for fraud, she got in the Oslo City Court in 2012. District Court Judge Oddvar Ege then summed it up this way:

‘The defendant must – despite the cancer diagnosis – have a reasonably good physics since she from July 2010 to April 2012 has managed to move around Oslo, Copenhagen, Lærdal, Halden, Tønsberg, Kongsberg, Skjåk and Töksfors and performed scams in all these places.’

The prosecution has filed a claim for two years imprisonment, of which one year is to be probational.

 

© NTB Scanpix / Aftenposten / Norway Today