The Mossos d’Esquadra They arrested in October 2022 a neighbor of Ruby who had impersonated eight clients of a bank to withdraw more than 70,000 euros from their checking accounts. The eight scammed victims had in common only that they had suffered robberies and thefts days before and that, among other belongings, the respective thieves had kept their ID. The eight identity documents ended up in the hands of the impostor, who used them to show them at the bank offices and pretend that it was each one of them, and withdraw the money.
The investigated was a 45-year-old woman with no criminal record who had lost her job. The Catalan police investigators were sure that she had not been the one who had stolen those DNIs from the victims. How had they ended up in her hands?
Six months later, in March 2023, the same agents, from the Sarrià-Sant Gervasi district Investigation Unit, arrested a 44-year-old resident of Terrassa, who had impersonated 35 clients using the same strategy. than the impostor of Rubí. In his case, he managed to withdraw a total of 57,000 euros from the checking accounts of his 35 victims. Nor had this investigated stolen the DNI that he had shown in each of the impersonations. The question was repeated: where had he gotten the stolen DNI?
car thieves
The Mossos, in this second case, found a thread to pull from when reviewing each of the complaints for robbery that the 35 impersonated victims had presented. In 90% of the cases, they were citizens who had gone to the Mossos, days before suffering the usurpation of identity, to explain that some thieves had broken the window of their vehicle to keep personal belongings, among which were the DNI.
Although there was no connection between the impersonator and the car thieves, for the investigators it became further evidence that there is a black market that united them The car thieves had resold the stolen IDs and the bank impostor had acquired them.
By age ranges and sex
According to the sources consulted, the Catalan police suspect that there are networks that to move these stolen ID and believe that, in some cases, even the sold by ‘packs’. In other words, the buyers of stolen identity documents group them by sex and age ranges and, later, they offer them to criminals, such as the two impostors that the Mossos have arrested in recent months.
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Thus, bank impersonators acquire, for example, a handful of ID cards stolen from 40-year-old men. How much should they do next? characterize how the victims they are going to impersonate in the offices look like in the DNI photographs: they cut their hair, put on glasses, grow a beard or shave, or wear a hat. That is what the two impostors who usurped the identity of 8 women and 35 men, respectively, were doing in the banks. This is how they managed in almost all cases to get money. Also, on other occasions, open checking accounts in the name of the victim and use them to move money of illicit origin.
The Catalan police have spent months, following these indications, trying to uncover how the black market for DNI works in Catalonia.