Barcelona, 6. December (EFE). – The National Police have arrested two people in the province of Barcelona who are accused of defrauding an unspecified number of victims by sending more than 790,000 text messages through 431 fraudulently contracted telephone lines.
With the profits from the scams, the prisoners bought cryptocurrency vouchers and electronic products such as video game consoles or professional hair straighteners, which they sold on second-hand platforms to launder the profits, the National Police said in a statement on Saturday.
The investigation began in the middle of this year when a complaint was received from a mobile operator warning of a large number of irregular mobile contracts.
After several investigations, the agents discovered that they were two people who wanted to carry out massive “smishing” campaigns – SMS scams – from a house in the province of Barcelona.
They forged official documents to register 431 telephone lines and sent more than 790,000 text messages to an unspecified number of randomly selected victims, the National Police detailed.
All of this resulted in economic damage to the company of more than 15,700 euros in transport and interconnection costs.
After identifying the cyber fraudsters and locating the operations center, a police operation was launched at the end of November last year, culminating in the arrest of a man and a woman who were declared to the judicial authority as suspected of being responsible for fraud and document forgery.
During the search, 75 mobile devices, 1,150 euros, 17 video game consoles and a large amount of forged documents were seized.
In addition, investigators confirmed that they transferred the defrauded funds via cryptocurrencies and also confiscated cryptoactive cards worth more than 10,000 euros. EFE
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