In Torrevieja (Alicante), the Guardia Civil arrested a man and a woman, a couple, on 49 counts of fraud and four instances of identity theft. They are said to have stolen from about 53 victims in many provinces of Spain. Both were wanted by the police and had more than 60 court orders that were still open, including arrest warrants and summonses from courts all throughout the country.
At the start of April, the Torrevieja Company’s Team saw that more and more people from different provinces were reporting rental frauds. The Guardia Civil said in a statement that all of the crimes followed the same pattern: cash was taken out of ATMs in Torrevieja.
After investigating the complaints, the agents found a clear “modus operandi” because the people who were arrested were said to have answered ads from people looking for rental housing on a number of different internet platforms.
After that, they purportedly offered houses that didn’t exist at prices lower than the market value and asked the victims for personal information. They then sent fraudulent contracts and photos of claimed owners, who were actually the names of prior victims who had been impersonated.
After gaining the victims’ trust, they allegedly told them to use cardless cash withdrawal numbers from their internet banking to complete the payment. With those codes, they could get the money right away from ATMs.
The agents found a 36-year-old male and a 44-year-old woman who had been living in Torrevieja since 2022 and had reportedly been involved in this type of scam since at least 2015. The Guardia Civil says that the couple used their victims’ personal information to contact new victims and set up a lot of prepaid phone lines. In some cases, they even set up six lines in the name of the same individual in just a few days.
The Guardia Civil further said that both of them had made this unlawful operation their major source of income and that they only used cash, rarely left their homes, and kept the blinds closed all the time to avoid being found.
The two people who were arrested had 62 court orders against them. These included 41 orders for search, arrest, and appearance, three orders for arrest and imprisonment, and many requests from courts in Alicante, Malaga, Asturias, Cadiz, Murcia, Seville, Girona, Barcelona, Valencia, Cantabria, Melilla, and Pontevedra, among others.
53 victims from various provinces
There have been 53 victims found so far in the provinces of A Coruña, Alicante, Almería, Asturias, Ávila, Badajoz, Cáceres, Cádiz, Cantabria, Castellón, Ciudad Real, Córdoba, Cuenca, Granada, Guadalajara, Guipúzcoa, Huelva, Jaén, La Rioja, Las Palmas, León, Lleida, Lugo, Madrid, Málaga, Murcia, Navarra, Sevilla, Tenerife, Toledo, and Valencia.
The Guardia Civil says that all of the victims lost money and had their identities stolen, which caused them to get police and court summonses from several regions.
Records
In November, a search warrant was carried out when the suspects were found at a home in Torrevieja. Police found equipment related to 25 different phone lines, five mobile phones, two tablets, clothing that was supposedly used in the crimes, and other items connected to the crimes inside the house. They also found 20 grammes of marijuana and signs that someone had used cocaine recently.
The Court of Instruction of the Judicial District of Torrevieja was given the detainees and the objects that were taken. It then ordered both of them to be put in jail.
Author: Derek Appleton
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