SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Nov. 14 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Civil Guard has arrested in Barcelona two members of a criminal organization specialized in technological scams that managed to access more than ten companies throughout the country, modifying the invoices to divert the money to other beneficiary bank accounts. The scammed money amounts to more than 120,000 euros and was laundered through investment in cryptocurrencies.
At the end of last year, the Technological Investigation Team (EDITE) of the Judicial Police Organic Unit of the Civil Guard Command of Santa Cruz de Tenerife began the so-called Operation ‘ALPINI’, following a complaint by a company based on the island after having suffered a bank scam through the internet.
After the aforementioned complaint, the Civil Guard agents carried out an analysis in relation to this type of scam, managing to relate up to ten affected entities throughout the country, all of them with the same modus operandi, which is based on a type of scam known as ‘man-in-the-middle-attack’.
Through it, criminals manage to electronically and without authorization intercept the communication between two devices of a certain company connected to a network and thanks to this they access the invoices that should have reached their clients and modify the beneficiary account, adding a in possession of scammers.
Once all the complaints were related, a series of investigations were initiated that led to the identification of the owner of the beneficiary account mentioned above, resulting in the identity used to open that account having been supplanted. In addition, it was found that numerous bank accounts had been opened using the same identity, to which funds allegedly coming from other criminal activities had arrived.
Despite the numerous false and/or impersonated identities used by the members of the organization to open bank accounts or to acquire prepaid SIM cards, which they subsequently disposed of to hinder a possible police investigation, the agents managed to identify several members of said criminal organization, the vast majority of whom were in different locations in Barcelona.
During the investigation, it was found that a large part of these funds telematically swindled from different companies located in different areas of the national territory were destined for the acquisition of cryptocurrencies, with which they acquired goods and invested in other types of crypto assets, with the dual purpose of laundering the swindled money, incorporating it into legal traffic, while making police work even more difficult.
Investigators are aware that one of those already detained would have made movements of up to 120,000 euros in cryptocurrencies in just a few months.
The operation has culminated with different entries and home searches in Barcelona and the arrest of two of the members of the criminal organization, one of them having been left in provisional prison. The third investigated in this case, considered to be one of the leaders of the criminal network, is currently being searched for and captured for being on the run abroad, where he would settle along with more members of this organization.
Among the effects intervened during the searches, in addition to those commonly used to commit crimes of this type, such as mobile phones, computers, tablets, pen-drives or SIM cards, a blank firearm modified to fire live fire .
All members of the organization are accused of the crimes of belonging to a criminal organization, money laundering, continued aggravated fraud and various crimes of identity theft, as well as illegal possession of weapons.
Despite the fact that this complex case affected the demarcation of several judicial districts in various parts of the national territory, it has been directed from the outset by the Court of First Instance and Instruction No. 2 of Güímar and the Section of Technological Crimes of the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
The investigation remains open, given that both the analysis of these intervened devices and the traceability of the cryptocurrency wallets can provide the agents with more information about this criminal network, as well as find out if there are more victims of fraud, which is highly probable, given the large amount of money that those involved have obtained.
