Parents fleeced by messaging fraud
Don’t get caught out by ‘child in trouble con’, warn police
POLICE in Alicante have arrested three people for a con which involves convincing people to part with large sums of money by pretending to be a child of theirs who needs urgent financial help.
The so-called ‘child in trouble con’ consists of contacting victims via messaging applications and getting them to transfer money into the bank account of a third party acting as a financial ‘mule’.
The first reported victim was a man in Alcalá de Henares (Madrid), who said he had believed it was his son and transferred €2,405, then the person claimed the transfer had not gone through and asked for another transfer of €2,105, which the father provided. Investigating officers found that the destination account was registered to an address in Alicante, where financial crime unit officers arrested the account holder on suspicion of fraud.
They connected the suspect
with two other men who were also allegedly involved in the fraud, and were arrested in possession of €3,140 in cash.
Afterwards police found
other victims of the same people in Palencia, Barcelona and Lugo.
So far the suspects are accused of defrauding four
people out of a total of €11,353, but the investigation remains ongoing in order to find any more possible victims. Three men aged between 18 and 22, who are Samoan and Spanish nationals, have made statements to police and will be summonsed by a court.
This fraud is a variation of the ‘suitcase con’, for which victims are also contacted by message by someone claiming to be a contact of theirs whose baggage is being withheld somewhere abroad unless they can find money to reclaim it.
The police advised that, to avoid falling victim to cons like these, first check who you are interacting with by asking them something personal only they would know, then try to contact them by other means to confirm what they say is happening is true.
If it turns out that your relative or friend is not really in this situation, ignore their messages and block the contact who has sent the message, report it to the police as soon as possible, and do not send any money to unknown accounts.