National Police officers have arrested ten people, members of a criminal group allegedly responsible for the commission of multiple scams committed throughout Spain, who fraudulently modified the ID cards of their victims to take out contracts with bank card companies. Four of those arrested are members of the network and another six worked as “mules.”
The gang leaders arrested were four men aged between 20 and 46, of British and Norwegian nationality, the Brit living in Cabo Roig, Orihuela Costa. All were placed at the disposal of the Orihuela Court of Instruction on duty.
The investigation began after learning of several payments received that were fraudulently made and investigators from the Judicial Police department of the National Police observed the same pattern.
The officers came to the conclusion that behind the commission of these crimes there was a criminal network dedicated to the practice of committing cyberattacks, that facilitated the commission of different types of fraud.
The first objective of the gang was to obtain images of original ID cards to modify them, using computer techniques and superimposing the photograph of another person in place of the real photograph of the holder of the altered ID card. They then began to operate with the falsified ID, carrying out various types of fraud that ranged from signing up for telephone line contracts to formalising credit card contracts.
The gang was organised in a hierarchical and tiered structure. One of the arrested men directed all operations and decided which type of fraud to carry out with each document at any given time. Another was a “fixer” who focused his actions on recruiting potential financial “mules”, obtaining telephone cards or documentation with which he could impersonate his victims.
The offices found among the seized documentation instructions for obtaining documentation through deception, as well as lists of names of people associated with their documentation and bank account with express indications of the balance.
Another gang member was in charge of recruiting people who would lend their image to be used in false documentation, creating accounts or telephone lines, always using the identity of other people. For this role, predominantly Irish girls were sought, who in exchange received financial compensation