Agents of the National Police attached to the Mérida Police Station have proceeded to arrest five people for their alleged responsibility for a crime of belonging to a criminal group, fraud and Money laundering. 

The detainees received money defrauded in their Bank accounts to later extract it from ATMs. The investigation began at the end of last year, following a complaint filed by one of those who was later arrested, in which he stated that his bank Account had been blocked and he did not have access to his money, the National Police reported on Wednesday. it’s a statement. 

The agents who processed said complaint suspected that it might be false, for which reason they began to investigate the facts reported in depth and carried out a detailed study of the movements of the aforementioned bank account. Thus, they came to the knowledge of the source account of the investigated money, which belonged to a company that in its day denounced in Guadalajara having been the victim of a scam through the ‘Sim Swapping’ modality, which occurs when a fraudster takes control of someone’s phone number. 

The scammer contacts a telecom operator and convinces him to transfer the victim’s phone number to a new SIM card, with which he can receive SMS and phone calls. “In essence, they can enter the victim’s accounts and mine them to obtain information or money, coming to steal more than 94,000 euros in this case,” said the National Police. 

Subsequently, the agents identified the other four members of this criminal group, holders of the bank accounts to which the fraudulently obtained money was destined. With the mandatory authorization, an entry and search was carried out at the home of the main suspect, who would be in charge of capturing the rest of the ‘mules’ – people who collect the scammed money and deliver it to others in the organization, collecting their corresponding commission-. The agents obtained essential information so that the investigation has opened other lines that are still open. 

The detainees are five people, two women and three men, between the ages of 20 and 46 with criminal records, who were transferred to the police stations in order to process the corresponding report. 

  Source: El Diario 

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