The Guardia Civil carried out arrests as part of the police operation, Beaker, in Cádiz, amongst them a deputy bank manager for fraud.

The woman is accused of embezzling 1,700,000 euros from her bank-branch clients using forgery and identity theft.

There are over 270 clients affected by this massive fraud carried out using bank transfers, loans, credit cards, time deposits, fraudulent, insurance policies and other banking products.

The accused allegedly used her position of confidence with her victims, the mayority of whom were elderly with little or no banking/financial knowledge. They trustingly handed over their savings to her to manage these funds in their best interest.

The bank has cooperated fully with the Guardia Civil and so far have returned over 1.5m to the victims.

The police investigation commenced in January this year after Guardia Civil in Chiclana (Cádiz) received a complaint from an elderly man. He recounted how a young, woman friend, whom he had known all her life and who worked in a bank, had authorised a transfer of 25,000 euros to a stranger’s account.

She contacted him and offered to return his money if he promised not to inform her place of work of what she had done. The police started investigating and the scope of the scam was discovered, leading to her arrest.

(News: Chiclana, Cadiz, Andalucia)