The National Police dismantles a network led by a young man who had not reached the age of majority and who has deceived 200 people and usurped 350,000 euros
A computer underage led a criminal gang that has defrauded more than 200 people in Spain. The National Police has proof that, through his deceptions, he has managed to stay with 350,000 euros that the victims had in their checking account. At the moment, one in five crimes denounced in the State is committed in the digital environment.
The young man, who had not yet turned 18, had designed fraudulent web pages of 18 banking entities that operate in Spain. Even those pages that the criminal group dominated sent to the victims, whom they ‘caught’ by sending an SMS or an email and supposedly notifying them that their checking accounts had suffered a security breach.
The web pages that pretended to be those of the banking entities in which the victims deposited their savings were monitored in real time by the members of the gang, he explains. Elisa Rebolo, spokesman for the National Police. If the victim entered that website and provided her personal data, the scammers would call immediately. In that conversation, one of them was pretending to be a bank worker willing to help her solve that security problem.
The National Police has provided some recordings –with the distorted voice of scammer and victim– in which the on what terms this conversation was taking place. The scammer entangles the victim by assuring her that she is being charged for payments that she has not made and that she must provide him with codes to cancel them. What the scammer is actually doing is ordering bank movements that the victim, by providing the codes, is accepting that they be carried out.
The spokesperson Rebolo explains that through this procedure they withdrew cash from the ATM, or requested quick loans, or diverted amounts to checking accounts that they had under their control, or even invested in cryptocurrencies.
The video attached to this news item shows the fraudster’s insistence on the victim, who finally refuses to pay and the latter ends the conversation by threatening to empty his checking account and leave him with only 14 cents. “Did you hear?” he blurts out before hanging up.
Buying and selling cars
The gang opened checking accounts in the names of other victims whose data they obtained through applications for the sale of second-hand objects, especially cars. The scammers made vehicle owners believe that they were interested in acquiring it, they even paid an amount of money as a goodwill advance, and then asked for a photograph of the DNI on both sides. If the seller accepted, with these data the gang would open a checking account to which they would divert the money from other victims.
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Rebolo clarifies that these car ‘sellers’ were also often scammed. To pay a new amount, the scammers made them believe that they were going to send them a ‘bizum’ with an amount of money previously announced by telephone. But what they were actually sending was a request for money for that amount. The victim often didn’t realize what she was agreeing to and ended up sending that amount to the scammer instead of receiving it.
In the operation ‘Dragonfly’ have been arrested 24 people in Cádiz, Málaga and Barcelona. Eight of which have entered preventive prison. The leader of the gang, a minor, has entered a open regimen center. The National Police asks that calls from unknown numbers be distrusted and that personal or bank details are never provided by phone or SMS. The bank will never request personal information by these means.