Spanish police arrested 11 people, this Tuesday (11), who operated two networks to deceive dozens of foreign families, mainly Brazilians, offering to turn their children into “elite professional players” in exchange for thousands of euros. .
The two gangs, independent of each other, ran soccer schools that recruited high-income young people abroad with “false expectations of becoming professional stars”.
The suspects offered accommodation and arranged residence permits in Spain, police said in a statement.
For this, families had to make a first payment of 5,000 euros (R$27,500) and then pay between 1,500 euros and 1,700 euros (between R$8,300 and R$9,300) monthly.
“Both organizations kept the young people in deplorable conditions during the 90 days they were in the country as tourists, as immigration procedures did not go through or were denied, and the deceived young people were forced to return to their countries”, says the police.
The investigation began after the complaint of a player who had been the victim of fraud at a football school in Granada, in the south of the country.
The investigators found “30 young foreigners of different origins, predominantly Brazilian, aged between 16 and 23”, housed in two houses rented by the soccer school. All had fallen for the blow.
At the other school, also in Granada, the police found another 40 young people, most of them Brazilians, staying at the house of one of the directors.
In both cases, the youths were “in overcrowded conditions with little food,” the statement said.
Immigration documents to regularize the situation of young people “always ended up not being admitted for processing or denied, since, in practically all cases, the documentation presented was incomplete or out of date”, added the police.