ATHENS, Greece - Prosecutors across Greece were ordered Tuesday to conduct emergency checks of birth records from the past six years, after the arrest of a Gypsy couple on suspicion of abducting a little girl triggered fears of widespread welfare fraud.
The blond-haired, fair skinned girl, known as Maria and believed to be 5 or 6, was spotted during a police raid on a Gypsy camp last week because her features did not appear to match those of the couple looking after her. DNA tests showed they were not her biological parents as claimed on her birth certificate.
The discovery has attracted the interest of investigators and parents involved in missing-child cases around the world, and also created worries among human-rights groups that Europe’s Gypsy community is being unfairly targeted.
The Gypsy camp suspects, Eleftheria Dimopoulou, 40, and Christos Salis, 39, received more than $3,420 in monthly welfare payments after declaring they had 14 children, eight of whom are unaccounted for and presumed not to exist, authorities said. They were jailed on charges of abduction and document fraud.
They deny the abduction allegations, claiming they received Maria from a destitute woman to raise as their own.
A Supreme Court prosecutor ordered a review of thousands of birth certificates issued after Jan. 1, 2008, amid growing criticism that the country’s birth registration system is open to abuse.
Families cheating the welfare system typically declare the same birth in multiple cities or produce false birth certificates for children who might not exist. Up until five months ago, there was no central national registry to crosscheck birth declarations.
Benefit fraud has become a powerful issue in Greece, which is suffering through its sixth year of recession and has an unemployment rate of nearly 28 percent.
On Monday, the mayor of Athens suspended three officials in charge of record keeping after an emergency review revealed multiple instances of birth certificates issued without proper documentation.
Police spotted Maria in a Gypsy camp during a crackdown on drug smuggling and burglary gangs. They said Maria’s birth was falsely declared in Athens by Dimopoulou in 2009, but they did not elaborate.
A charity in charge of the girl’s temporary care said a dental examination indicated she is 5 or 6, or a year or two older than her birth records would indicate. It is not even certain the child was born in Greece.
The FBI said Tuesday that it was looking into whether Maria was a missing Kansas City, Mo., girl, though the children’s ages don’t appear to match.
FBI spokesman Bridget Patton said the 2-year-old disappearance of Lisa Irwin from her Kansas City home remains an open investigation and that agents follow up on all tips. Patton said the agency began receiving calls after the image of Maria appeared in media reports.
Lisa would turn 3 in November.
In Ireland on Monday, police seized a young blond haired girl from a Romanian Gypsy couple in Dublin in a move spurred by the case in Greece.
The couple said the 7-year old child was theirs, but a Dublin maternity hospital they cited had no record of the birth. No arrests have been made.
Information for this article was contributed by Costas Kantouris, Nicholas Paphitis, Shawn Pogatchnik and staff members of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 10/23/2013