20.12.2013 Undifferentiated Coverage of the Grandchildren Trick Scam and Rroma

Ruch (2013) reports about a Polish Rroma clan who is allegedly behind the rising cases of so-called Grandchildren scam in Switzerland. The otherwise analytical report misses the critical use of ethnic categories. Instead, the popular public image of a mafia-like, hierarchical Rroma clan is dished, which stand behind the criminal offenses. Due to the indiscriminate attribution ofethnicity, Ruch feeds the idea of a culturally conditioned delinquency among Rroma. He states, “behind the vast majority of grandchildren trick in the German-speaking lands one finds the same group of offenders. A widely branched, Polish-German Roma family which earlier sold worthless carpets as expensive Oriental rugs and therefore stood in the crosshairs of investigators. In 1999, they probably invented the grandson trick scam in Poland, which they perfected successfully until today. The several hundred members of the clan are professionally organized according to the police. They operate literally call center and earn so well with this trick that they can afford a lavish lifestyle with expensive sports cars and extravagant family celebrations”. From Ruch’s article, it is not clear that there is no direct relationship between ethnicity and the offenses described. Instead, a cultural explanation is presented, an explanation that needs no further discussion because it is justified by itself. Such a reasoning is racist. Most Rroma are integrated citizens who are never named in the media. Unfortunately, journalists like André Ruch are still not aware of this.

Other Swiss newspapers such as the NZZ (2013) wrote uncommented that the perpetrators are mostly belonging to a Polish Roma clan.