The National Police in Alicante have arrested four males, aged 20 to 34, on suspicion of being involved in theft, fraud, and being members of a criminal organisation. The people who were arrested were involved in stealing mobile phones and then getting into the owners’ bank accounts to make fake money transactions that cost victims more than €12,500.
The National Police said in a statement that the “modus operandi” of individuals arrested was always the same: they acted late in the morning, usually when stores that people with a lot of money frequented were closing.
They would usually ask for a hotel address to get to their victims. At that point, the people who owned the phones would unlock them to ask, and the criminals would take advantage of this to watch how the phones were unlocked and then take them from their hands.
After that, the people who were now in custody ran away in a car that was parked nearby and driven by a third person.
The National Police said that the victims chose to report the crimes the next day since they thought it was just a phone theft and it happened at night.
The thieves, on the other hand, took advantage of those hours and the fact that they knew how to unlock the device to get into online banking and do a lot of illegal things, like Bizums, transfers, and card payments, which caused “great financial damage,” the same source said.
The criminals had a lot of time to make the fake charges because the victims didn’t have their mobile terminal and didn’t find out about the payments until the next day through family members or when they looked them up online.
They then sold the phones
The National Police also said that once the victims told their banks about the fake charges and stopped the accounts, the criminals couldn’t keep the scam going and sold the phones on the black market.
An investigation of the fake transactions made by the criminals found that the victims lost more than €12,500. Also, the inmates tried to move different amounts of money totalling €12,300 to different accounts, but these transfers were not completed because of bank fraud security systems.
Various measures were taken to locate and apprehend the individuals responsible for these crimes. In the end, four men were arrested for theft, fraud, and being part of a criminal organisation.
Author: Derek Appleton
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