Cybercriminal arrested in Valencia’s Mislata on suspicion of €105,000 scam

A cybercriminal has been arrested by the National Police after he allegedly scammed more than €100,000 from a company in Alicante.

He was detained in the Valencian town of Mislata on suspicion of using the ‘man in the middle’ technique to obtain the bank details of both companies in order to carry out an elaborate scam. The criminal had reportedly been arrested 10 times previously for committing similar crimes.

An investigation was launched back in September 2022 after a man representing an Alicante-based company filed a complaint stating that he had been the victim of a €105,000 online scam.

How was the scam carried out?

In his statement, the man revealed that the company had made a payment to another company for services provided. During the exchange of emails leading up to the money being sent, no suspicions were aroused he said because the other company provided invoices that only the two companies would have been aware of.

With these facts in hand, the police began an investigation. They initially verified that the email address from which the ‘other company’ had contacted the victim to make the payment was an account that did not belong to a ‘company’. It was quickly identified as a spoof email account.

Sources from the National Police informed lasprovincias.es that a few days later, the other company also filed a complaint. They had discovered that someone had impersonated their email address, resulting in their sending correspondence to an unknown person.