The National Police is alerting the citizens of the ‘Good Samaritan’ scama kind of scam for which three people have been arrested in Pamplona who have defrauded their victim of more than 36,000 euros.
The perpetrators of this type of scam are dedicated to call by telephone to their victims by telling them that a loved one of yours is admitted very serious in a private hospital. Pretending to be hospital staff, doctors or friends accompanying you, they ask transfers of high amounts of money to cost the supposed operations that their loved one requires, according to them, to survive.
The case of Pamplona
In the specific case of Pamplonathe National Police has arrested three peopletwo women aged 40 and 23 and a 51-year-old man in the Navarrese town, as alleged perpetrators of a crime of fraud against a resident of Zaragoza for more than 36,000 euroswith the scam of the ‘good Samaritan’, who was deceived into believing that he was paying for the medical expenses of a friend that she was admitted with a serious prognosis.
As reported in a press release from the police force, the investigation began in July 2022, when this man reported in Zaragoza that, at the end of May, he received a phone call in which a doctor from a hospital in Pamplona informed her that a friend of hers was hospitalized with a prognosis very serious. Since the complainant knew the alleged patient, made ten transfers to the accounts that indicated a total value of 36,000 euros in order to pay for her friend’s stay at that private clinic.
In successive calls, the presumed doctor asked for money to pay for operations such as womb emptying, heart and liver, lung or pancreas transplant. At one point, and as the calls continued, relatives and employees of his bank convinced the victim that it could be a scam and he filed a complaint.
The authors took advantage of the special relationship that the complainant had with one of them and deceived him into believing that he was in very serious condition and that he was speaking on the phone with hospital personnel, doctors and friends who were accompanying him.
The research made by agents of the Provincial Brigade of Judicial Police of Aragon revealed that no one with the identity data of the alleged patient He had been admitted to that hospital. Furthermore, the number of the ID provided did not match the name and surname of that person. Neither was any doctor found in the records with the data provided to the victim.
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The investigative efforts demonstrated that the calls of the alleged doctor had been made since lines in the name of the presumed patient entered. The researchers also verified how the money was withdrawn from the bank accounts the same day that the deposit was made and that they were used different account numbers to receive payments on behalf of different people.
Once the investigators had identified the alleged perpetrators, efforts were made for their arrest. As the three people investigated had domiciles in the Foral Community, the proceedings were transferred to the Provincial Judicial Police Brigade of Navarrawho proceeded to his location and arrest and to make the investigative proceedings available to the Judicial Authority. Among the three people arrested were 17 background.