Officers belonging to the Guardia Civil, cyber-fraud branch have arrested a Motril man in his early 40s for allegedly running an online scam.

There are two other individuals suspected of participating in this sting, which was reported to the police earlier in the year, in February.

One victim has a webpage specialising renting out casas rurales (rural, tourist accommodation). The other victim had got in contact by phone to say that having booked one of the properties via a well known sale/purchase app, making the required payment, he realised that he had been swindled.

The website owner informed this person that she did not even deal through the said app, so it was reported to the Guardia Civil  who began investigating.

They discovered that crooks had supplanted the woman’s webpage for their own. Having convinced their victim that he was booking a rural holiday home from the bona-fide webpage, and the requested payment via Bizum  received, the crooks cut off all contact with the victim.

The cyber police tracked the money to a bank account in Granada and soon discovered where the money had ended up and to whom it belonged; the 42-year-old Motril man. 

The other two persons involved live outside the province and are what in Spanish slang terms are known as mulas bancarias; i.e., people who for small amounts of money open accounts in their name and hand them over to criminals to launder illicit payments. Therefore they will be charged with being accomplices.

The number of people who risk imprisonment by becoming mulas bancarias for criminal to earn a bit-on-the-side is growing.

(News: Motril, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)