They contacted relatives of immigrants who had disappeared in their attempt to reach the Spanish coast and tricked them, upon payment, into repatriating their bodies. Now, the Civil Guard has arrested 14 people in 13 home searches (where almost 70,000 euros in cash, vehicles and documentation have been seized) carried out in Almería, Jaén and Murcia, thus dealing a significant blow to this criminal gang. In addition, there is another person who is being investigated.

The network would have been profiting for years at the expense of relatives residing in Morocco and Algeria of missing people who died at sea while trying to reach the Spanish coast in boats.

It all started through social networks, generally with false profiles of the plot, with which they contacted the families offering them false information about the whereabouts of their loved ones in exchange for money.

Subsequently, when they became aware of a shipwreck, they contacted the family again to ask for personal information about the missing persons to carry out a false search for these people, accompany the families to file a complaint, manage DNA collections for the identification of the body and Translate services. All this with the requirement of prior payment with the argument that it was the only way to proceed in Spain for the identification and repatriation of the bodies.

To establish contact with the families they used a large number of false profiles on social networks, but to extract information about the identification of corpses they did so with the collaboration and involvement of employees of some public institutions related to the identification process, such as a Institute of legal medicine.

Once they had in their possession information on how to act in the management of corpse identification, such as photographs of the bodies, they provided it to the families to ensure that they signed authorizations so that the funeral homes involved in the plot could take the contract exclusively. .

The Civil Guard agents began this operation when they detected several of these photographs on the internet. After their investigation, it was possible to identify the leader of the group, an individual of Moroccan origin, and its main members in Murcia and Almería.

This person used his contacts in the communities of Maghreb origin to get the families to trust his word when he told them that there was no other way to repatriate the bodies of their deceased, accumulating a large number of contacts between funeral companies and entities related to the identification and repatriation of bodies. He was also in charge of managing payments to interveners and information facilitators.

In the exploitation phase of the operation, 13 searches were carried out, eight in Murcia – five in the capital, two in Cartagena and one in Molina de Segura -, four in Almería and one in Jaén. In them, numerous documentation related to the case, several vehicles and almost 70,000 euros in cash were seized in the home of one of those responsible for the plot.

In total there are 14 detainees and one investigated accused of crimes of revealing secrets, against respect for the deceased, fraud, membership in a criminal organization, falsification of documents, bribery and omission of the duty to prosecute crimes.

The Civil Guard has brought the detainees to justice, who has ordered the imprisonment of two of them. The investigation is carried out by the Investigative Court No. 5 of Murcia.