The suspect allegedly used 44 false identities to swindle the said sums from large, department stores in the provinces of Almería, Madrid, Murcia, Sevilla, as well as Granada.
Police investigations began in June last year when a financing entity working with one of these large department stores reported fraudulent activity that it had detected in a request for a shopping, credit card extended to customers used in hire-purchase arrangements.
The police managed to identify the suspect and discovered that he had a high degree of knowledge and specialisation on how the financing sector works enabling him to negate anti-fraud controls.
Starting with obtaining false DNIs he was able to obtain a pre-pay phone number, bank account and abode details for each of his false identities. With these documents he was able to approach the department stores and apply for a credit line with the shopping entity, supply a false delivery address.
These delivery address corresponded to uninhabited dwellings with easy access to the post box, normally on street level. Although most of them were in the province of Granada, many were in other provinces, as well. Some of the credit cards had a limit of 8,000 euros, which he would quickly use up.
The police checked out all of the address given and tracked down one in Almuñécar where the suspect was living under a false identity. Inside the dwelling they found a small but highly professional laboratory for forging documents.
The present Spanish DNI are DNI 3.0, using the most sophisticated technology, making them virtually impossible to forge, but forge them he did, sufficiently to fool his victims.
(News: Almunecar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)