2023-05-08 16:54:52
Agents of the Generalitat Police stopped at Valencia, a 44-year-old man to whom a crime of fraud and another of falsification of stamped effects are attributed. He would have sent 4,742 letters addressed abroad from 379 mailboxes in different towns of the demarcation of Barcelona.
The investigation began in mid-April 2022 after the Post Office Automated Treatment Center detected several letters with counterfeit stamps. The envelopes had been deposited in the mailboxes of the towns of Viladecans, Sant Boi de Llobregat, El Prat de Llobregat and Cornellà de Llobregat, Barcelona, Badalona, San Adrià del Besòs, Rubí, Sant Cugat del Vallès, Sabadell, and Terrassa.
Agents from the Central Counterfeit Currency Unit identified the sender of the letters, who currently resided in Valencia and they arrested him on Friday, April 27 with the support of the National Police.
They also carried out an entry and search at his home where they located counterfeit stamps and envelopes identical to those issued by those responsible for the Post Office and letters with similar characteristics to those he had already sent, to defraud people in other countries such as Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.
The investigation was directed by the Investigating Court number 1 of Rubí, which decreed freedom with charges for the detainee.
The scam in the form of Nigerian letters
Letters impersonated the identity of a worker from a law firm that he had privileged information and that he was looking for relatives of a businessman who died in 2012 in a traffic accident. The supposed businessman had left them as heirs to a great fortune. To make the inheritance effective, he summoned the victims to pay their fees to initiate the legal claim.
Extract from one of the letters sent:
“…Before his death, he deposited the sum of 11.8 million dollars in a bank here in Spain. Now the bank has located me to find a family heir to claim the money before it is confiscated or reversed by the Office of Diplomatic Security, as an unclaimed fund.”.
«I have decided to look for a relative of my deceased client, a task that has been very difficult for me because he did not declare any other person, address, partner or relatives in the official documentation of his deposit.
In this context, I know that you are the closest relative of my deceased…”
“with your help I will prepare all the relevant documents for your claim and facilitate the issuance and transfer of the funds to your account”
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