A criminal group tried to extort €2 million from a woman, threatening to kill her and her minor daughter. According to the police, the coordinator of the criminal group is 53 and is a family friend of the blackmailed woman, IPN reports.

The General Police Inspectorate said the 53-year-old suspect recruited two more men from Chisinau, who were earlier tried for theft and swindle. These sent phone or written messages to the woman. The written messages were thrown in the yard of the woman’s house or were left on the grave of the victim’s husband who died in 2014. The messages threatened the woman with her death by the explosion of a grenade or by strangulation and with the death of her daughter who is not in the country.

For the woman not to realize that one of the extorters was a family friend, the three invented a pretext for the extortion, saying that one of them served time in jail for an offense he committed together with her late husband and now she needs to pay back a part of the ill-gotten gains.

Officers of the Organized Crime Division and prosecutors arrested two of the suspects, while the third man is investigated outside remand.