Spanish National Police arrest three hackers for extortion of over €300,000

The three hackers arrested by the Spanish National Police operated from their residences in Badajoz, León and Córdoba, placing a multitude of advertisements on web portals or forums, in which they offered their supposed services posing as sophisticated hackers, offering different tools and computer services such as: spying on WhatsApp in real time, email accounts and social network profiles.

The Spanish National Police also reported that the hackers advertised the performance of administrative procedures, such as the elimination of outstanding debts from the Tax Agency’s servers, data on debtors from the ASNEF (National Association of Financial Credit Establishments), from the RAI (Register of Unpaid Acceptances) or even the elimination of fines from the General Directorate of Traffic.

They also offered to change grades on university servers, record official qualifications that were never taken and other similar services.

Once the victim refused to make further payments, the alleged perpetrators carried out their threat and contacted the party they intended to spy on.

They told them that they had information of interest to them and showed them some content so that they could verify that it was true, demanding the payment of an economic amount in exchange for knowing the complete information.

In this way, they obtained new paycheques by offering the private content of the conversations held and sensitive, private or intimate data.

After a year of analysis of the information gathered, the following were seized: 5 mobile telephone terminals, 12 telephone terminals, 1 hard disk, 5 computer sticks, 28 SIM cards and diverse banking material; containing information related to the practice of the investigated facts.

Two of the suspects were also arrested at their homes in León and Badajoz, and a third arrest, of the main suspect, took place a few days later at Madrid Barajas airport, after landing in Spain from the Philippines.

One of those under investigation was already in prison for other offences, and a final person under investigation in Seville was heard as an investigator, after which she was released.

The investigation is still open pending the analysis of the material seized during the searches, and the appearance of new victims is not ruled out.

Thank you for taking the time to read this article, do remember to come back and check The Euro Weekly News website for all your up-to-date local and international news stories and remember, you can also follow us on Facebook and Instagram.