COSTA BLANCA NEWS: Under arrest in Benidorm for scamming pensioner seeking parents’ remains out of thousands

POLICE in Benidorm have arrested a man accused of scamming an elderly woman out of €43,000 after fooling her into believing he was going to locate her parents’ remains. The fraud victim’s mother and father were shot during the Civil War when she was just a child. Police said the con artist got in touch with the pensioner and offered to speed up the search process for the remains. He then asked her for different sums of money to pay for the supposed investigations. Over several months he kept the victim’s hopes up by feeding her false information. In return she handed over ever larger amounts of cash. It was a well thought-out scam, police commented. He even managed to make the woman believe remains had been located with could be those of her parents, but told her he would need more money to carry out DNA tests in London, which were in fact pure fiction. The fraudster repeatedly told his victim not to breathe a word about what he was doing so as not to hinder the search. In the end it was friends who persuaded the victim to contact police, leading to the suspect’s identification and detention.

POLICE arrested a man in Benidorm accused of scamming an elderly woman out of €43,000 after fooling her into believing he was going to locate her parents’ remains.
The fraud victim’s mother and father were shot during the Spanish Civil War when she was just a child.
Police said the con artist got in touch with the pensioner and offered to speed up the search process for the remains. He then asked her for different sums of money to pay for the supposed investigations.
Over several months he kept the victim’s hopes up by feeding her false information. In return she handed over ever larger amounts of cash.
It was a well thought-out scam, police commented. He even managed to make the woman believe remains had been located with could be those of her parents, but told her he would need more money to carry out DNA tests in London, which were in fact pure fiction.
The fraudster repeatedly told his victim not to breathe a word about what he was doing so as not to hinder the search.
In the end it was friends who persuaded the victim to contact police, leading to the suspect’s identification and detention.

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Written by

Cathy Elelman

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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