For Alejandro P. B., 24, the year 2020 could not have started worse. That New Year’s Eve, this man from Zaragoza, who is trying to make a career in the world of soccer, found out on Instagram that a criminal was using his personal data to commit small scams on the Internet. Although he denounced it the next day, since then he has received fifteen complaints against him throughout Spain. A situation that has taken its toll on him financially and personally, as well as costing him some run-ins with the security forces. .
The last of these episodes took place on January 29. During the early morning of San Valero, a holiday in the Aragonese capital, the National Police appeared at a well-known downtown hotel where the young man was spending the night with a friend. The reason? That when registering with his DNI, it was detected that he had a search and arrest warrant issued in September 2022 by a Seville court for a complaint filed two years earlier.
“I was shocked,” says Alejandro on a terrace. On the way to the police station, he asked the agents if they did not know that he lived in Zaragoza, where he has been registered for almost all of his life, and that he has never hidden, but they told him that they were only following orders. He was recorded, photographed and fingerprinted. He then entered the dungeon until, in the morning, they took him to the court. Already with his lawyer present, everything was clarified and the judge released him, but no one takes away the bad time he had.
Alejandro, Ãlex, does not know how or when his identity was usurped, although he suspects that it could have been through a fraudulent mobile application. What he does know is that his double began to massively advertise the sale of pets on different internet pages and provide a contact telephone number whose line he had contracted with the stolen personal data. After contacting potential clients, the scammer told them how to make the deposit – always less than 400 euros for it to be a minor crime – before receiving the animal. Now with the money in hand, if I’ve seen you I don’t remember.
During this time, the young footballer has received complaints from Salamanca, Valladolid, Liria, Sagunto and Mislata (Valencia), Pravia (Asturias), Ibi (Alicante), Lora del RÃo (Seville) or Torrejón de Ardoz (Madrid) among others. Every time a summons arrives, he has to contact the security body that has picked it up and tell them that it is an identity theft and that he is one more affected. He also tries to get the case filed before he goes to court to avoid having to appear with a lawyer, attorney and power of attorney, with all the expenses that this entails.
If in the end you have to declare, you can usually do it electronically, although not always. “They have not made it easy for us,” emphasizes his father, Fernando. On one of those occasions he had to travel to Villablino (León), where he experienced another unpleasant episode when he was arrested by the Civil Guard when he was leaving the hotel to go to court (they were looking for him for a statement in Barcelona to which he was summoned and there was no appeared). “I had to accompany them to the barracks and wait for them to check my version to be released,” he says.
In all this time, Ãlex claims to have spent thousands of euros on his legal defense and travel. But the damage goes beyond the portfolio. He has had to skip training sessions to be able to testify. He has also ruled out any offers to play abroad in case he had to return to appear in court. Looking ahead, he fears that this mess will affect his plans to oppose the national police or firefighter. “The danger is that I cannot present myself if in one of these processes the judge does not believe me and I end up with a criminal record,” he laments.
His lawyer, Alberto Delgado, has tried to bring all the cases together under the same procedure, but some of the courts involved have refused. Over the phone, he denounces that the problems of his client expose two issues: that the legal system is not designed for this type of case, where clients like his suffer “great helplessness”; and that there should be greater coordination between the archives of the different bodies and State security forces. “The regulatory change and the coordination of police files is essential for proper treatment,” he underlines.
For now, the only thing that seems to have had a certain effect is the complaint filed in 2021 against the alleged usurper, who is in search and capture. Since then, by chance or not, the avalanche of complaints has stopped, although that is not a guarantee that it will not receive any more, as happened in January. “Within the bad, now I am somewhat calmer. At least until the next one arrives â€, ditch Ãlex.
