By Cathy Elelman • Published: 21 Mar 2019 • 15:06
ALMERIA POLICE made ten arrests after uncovering a marriage of convenience scam in Andalucia, Spain.
Investigators from the police Illegal Immigration and Falsified Documents Network Central Unit and the Andalucia government’s Equality and Social Policy department identified a structure dedicated to setting up marriages of convenience or common-law partnerships between Spanish or EU nationals and immigrants from other countries trying to get legal resident status in this country.
The group of seven women and three men of Spanish, Romanian, Moroccan and Dominican nationality charged up to €8,000 euros per union. They offered the Spaniards and EU citizens playing their part in the fraud between €3,000 and €4,000, and gave money to intermediaries who put the couples in contact with each other and the homeowners allowing their properties to be given as the couples’ home addresses. The investigations also found the group produced false official documents to validate the unions.
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Cathy Elelman is the local writer for the Costa de Almeria edition of the Euro Weekly News.
Based in Mojacar for the last 21 years, Cathy is very much part of the local community and is always well and truly up on all the latest news and events going on in this region of Spain.
Her top goals are to do the best job she can informing the local English-speaking community, visitors to the area and the wider world about about the news in Almeria, to learn something new every day, and to embrace very new challenge this fast-changing world brings her way.
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