A Bank Manager, a Daughter in Distress, and a €15,000 Scam in Alicante

A WhatsApp message supposedly sent by her daughter, who was living abroad and requesting financial help to settle some card bills, has 'cleaned out' the bank account of a woman residing in Alicante after scamming her out of €15,693. During the scam, the alleged criminals posed as a bank manager, guiding the victim through the fraudulent transactions, according to police sources.

The National Police have arrested two of the four alleged perpetrators of the well-known 'child in distress' scam in the Madrid town of Móstoles. The other two have been identified as the alleged authors of the events, one of whom may have carried out the recruitment of the rest, and efforts continue to arrest them, according to the same sources.

The investigation began after a woman residing in Alicante reported receiving a message on her mobile phone through a well-known messaging app from an unknown number, supposedly from her daughter, who was abroad at the time.

In the message, the supposed young woman said her phone had broken and she could only communicate via messages from that new phone number. She continued to say she was in a hurry to make some payments to settle some card bills and that, as her phone was not working, she could not access her account. Specifically, the supposed daughter indicated that she needed to make a transfer of €3,998, for which the bank manager would call her.

Thus, she received a call from a man, a supposed bank manager, who guided her on how to make this transfer. However, this individual told her that as it was taking time to become effective, they would repeat the process, resulting in a second transfer for the same amount.

In this way, while the victim was on the phone with the supposed bank employee, she continued to receive messages from the supposed daughter, asking her to make new transfers, eventually making three more, of €5,000, €1,200, and €1,500 this time, until she had almost no balance left in the account, at which point she stopped receiving messages and the supposed manager ended the call after saying the issue had been resolved.

Finally, the victim, puzzled by what had happened, decided to contact her daughter by calling her usual phone. To her surprise, the young woman indicated that she had not communicated with her all morning, at which point she realised she had been the victim of an increasingly common scam: the 'child in distress'.

Following the report, Judicial Police officers from the Provincial Police Station in Alicante carried out investigations to ascertain the identity of the alleged perpetrators of the scam, identifying four people, two men and two women, all residing in Madrid.

Thus, once the perpetrators of the incident were identified, two of them were arrested in the Madrid town of Móstoles. The police continue efforts to arrest the other two alleged perpetrators. According to the investigations, one of them was the one who played the role of recruiter for the other individuals involved in the scam.

A 'money mule' is a person who, in the context of a scam carried out telematically, either via the internet or by phone, is recruited to provide their bank details or open one or more bank accounts as a 'bridge' to receive and transfer, between bank accounts, the money illicitly obtained by these latter. Through their actions, criminal organisations access the funds from the illicit activity carried out, without the initial risk of being identified.

'Mules' are recruited in various ways, such as direct contact or by email. However, criminals increasingly resort to social networks to recruit new accomplices through fake job advertisements.

These offers, with hardly any requirements, offer the 'mule' juicy commissions, simply for making one or more bank accounts available to the criminals to transfer the illicit funds, facilitating access to them. In this way, the 'mules' participate, with varying degrees of knowledge, in the criminal dynamics executed by the criminal organisation, being responsible, in many cases, for a crime of money laundering.

Therefore, the National Police advise that if you are aware that you have been recruited as a 'mule', you should report it as soon as possible, as falling into the trap would mean collaborating with the criminals to launder their profits, thus becoming an accomplice to the crime, the Force states.