Scammer arrested in Murcia for allegedly defrauding €100,000 from 100 people

National Police officers arrested a suspected scammer in Murcia for allegedly defrauding at least 100 people out of €100,000.

As reported by the National Police on Thursday, February 16, officers arrested a suspected scammer in the city of Murcia. He is believed to have swindled more than €100,000 from a hundred people he contacted through his social networks.

Hundreds of messages were sent to his online contacts who he allegedly deceived by offering to multiply their money. He subsequently scammed the money from them using different techniques. The detainee was wanted by 16 courts in Spain and had created a profile in which he pretended to be a military man in order to gain the trust of his victims.

According to sources from the National Police, the arrested man had lived in different Spanish cities. He was finally arrested in the city of Murcia. During a search carried out in his rented room, cash was seized.

The fugitive was wanted by courts all over Spain – Majadahonda, Granada, Getafe, Segovia, Burgos, Puerto Real, Ceuta, Coslada, Zaragoza, Montilla, Barrameda, Malaga, Sevilla and Tarragona – with a total of 16 warrants issued for his arrest since May 2022.

A vital breakthrough in the investigation to locate him came when one of his victims went to an Alicante police station. they reported being swindled out of almost €18,000 during the month that he had been talking to the perpetrator.

Police officers specialising in the investigation of economic crime began to follow the trail of the fraudster. they quickly established that he had been living in Ceuta, Madrid, Malaga, San Javier in Murcia, and finally, in the city of Murcia, where his arrest took place.

His arrest took place at midnight last Friday 10, when agents from the Economic and Fiscal Crime Group in Alicante located the suspect on his way to an ATM in the centre of Murcia.

They had been tracking him for days and it was at that moment, just when he was about to withdraw the cash from his latest scam, that he was arrested by the National Police.

The method used by the alleged fraudster evolved over time. At first, he presented himself as a sports betting specialist who made it seem that he could double the money provided by his victims in a few days. He then posed as an asset investor, although the money was never invested as he withdrew it from different ATMs in Spain in order to profit financially.

Larger scams were executed by gaining the trust of his victims for days, weeks and even months in some cases. He had a profile on social networks with photographs of his time in the military, which he used to contact his victims. He would send his military ID card with the intention of making them believe that they were not involved in any kind of shady business.

Due to the number of scams he committed on a daily basis, to manage the money he convinced the victims to create accounts in a sports betting chain. They subsequently deposited their money, then he asked them for the access codes to operate with them freely.

In this way, he created a whole network of online accounts in the name of his victims, with which he carried out financial transactions and cash withdrawals at ATMs of different entities throughout Spain.

Investigators found out that none of the accounts involved in the scams was in the name of the arrested man. As a result, his victims believed that their fraudsters were other people when, in reality, they were other victims.

During the search of his rented room, €600 in cash was found. After being brought before the courts for having 16 judicial requisitions in force for fraud offences and as the alleged perpetrator of a document forgery offence, he was remanded in custody, as reported by larazon.es.

🚩Detenido un hombre en #Murcia que estafó más de 100.000€ a un centenar de víctimas con las que contactó a través de una red social

🔹Se encontraba reclamado por 16 juzgados en España

👉Creó un perfil falso, ofreciendo multiplicar su 💸 y engañando con diferentes técnicas pic.twitter.com/SIuTxi4jO1

— Policía Nacional (@policia) February 16, 2023

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