SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Oct 26 (EUROPA PRESS) –
Investigators of the National Police have learned of the commission of international scams, also in Tenerife, committed through social networks using false or usurped profiles to gain the trust of the victims.
The perpetrators of this type of crime first observe the profiles on social networks of their potential victims. To commit the scam, they usurp the identity of her contacts, using her name and photograph.
Thus, they contact her, who thinks she is talking to a friend, and they request an amount of money to pay the customs taxes of another country to which they have traveled and to be able to release their luggage, which is being held there.
The scam is characterized by the sending of massive messages by the authors until one of the potential victims responds. Another characteristic that is intrinsic to this type of event is the urgency of the circumstances that motivate the request for money, which tries to prevent the information provided by the fraudster from being verified by the victim.
On the part of the National Police, it is recommended to make an adequate security configuration of the profiles in social networks and to distrust requests of this nature, which are usually surrounded by urgent pretexts of different kinds to scam the victim.
