The Mossos d’Esquadra have arrested a man with multiple records for fraud, accused of posing as a real estate manager to deceive a person who wanted to buy a home in Miami Platja (Tarragona) and who ended up losing 151,468 euros. As reported by the Catalan police, in addition to the false real estate manager, 40, the Mossos have denounced his wife, 44, for the same scam, and who, like him, has several records for similar acts.
Specifically, the couple was already arrested on January 24 accused of perpetrating three scams in the Baix Penedès region of Tarragona, with which they managed to get hold of 85,000 euros, and accumulates another six criminal acts for other frauds and falsifications committed at different points of Catalonia since 2017. The investigation began as a result of a complaint filed at the beginning of last November by a European citizen who claimed that he had been scammed when he tried to buy a home in Miami Platja, a coastal town in the municipality of Mont-roig del Camp (Tarragona).
Months before, the buyer, who was having difficulties finding financing to purchase the home, had hired the services of the detainee, who was posing as a registered real estate agent in L’Escala (Girona).
The alleged fraudster managed a web page in which he offered his services as a real estate manager in offices in Madrid, Barcelona and Tarragona -which the police verified were non-existent- and, to act as an intermediary in the sale and purchase operation, he used a company in the name of his wife who had a false registered office in Sabadell (Barcelona).
The detainee managed to get the victim to deposit several sums of money into one of the thirty bank accounts he managed with his wife, after impersonating the person in charge of a financial institution in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona) that he accredited, through false documentation , that the victim had been granted a mortgage loan. In this way, the scammed person signed the deposit contract with the owner of the house and began to pay the detainee for false notary fees and document translation.
Using different pretexts to delay the signing of the sale as long as possible, the detainee managed to get the victim to give him 116,468 for an operation that never came to fruition, with which he had to pay another 35,000 euros to the owner of the property for breach of contract. earnest
The Mossos d’Esquadra consider that it is a “fully professional” type of fraud, in which people with difficulties accessing mortgage loans agree to deposit the money destined for the purchase of the property in the bank account of the fraudsters, believing in the veracity of the operation due to the falsified documentation that is shown to him. The Catalan police keep the investigation open, since it does not rule out that the detainee, who has been released with charges after going to court, has committed other similar scams.
