- The investigation carried out by the Team@ of the Civil Guard of Álava detected the direct relation of twenty-one complaints filed throughout the national territory
- The value of the defrauded amounts to an amount greater than forty thousand euros
In an operation carried out by the organic unit of the Judicial Police of the Civil Guard of Álava, 2 people have been arrested for the alleged commission of at least seventeen crimes of fraud related to the sale of plane tickets. The facts date back to a complaint received on February 20, in which it warned about the purchase of trips from Asunción (Paraguay) to Spain through the travel agency located in Barcelona.
According to the complaint, those affected paid a total of 2,260 € through bank transfers for services that subsequently proved to be non-existent. Despite having received apparently valid locators, travelers discovered, when trying to validate them with the airline, that they did not correspond to real reservations.
Faced with these events, the Team@ of the UOPJ of the Civil Guard of Álava began to determine whether it was an isolated event or whether, on the contrary, it could be the product of a recurring activity carried out by that business.
After consulting various forums of those affected by the aforementioned travel agency, it was possible to locate several injured persons who were informed of the possibility of filing a complaint because they had not done so previously, so that, finally, a total of 21 complaints were filed in various points of the Spanish geography for facts similar to those reflected in the initial complaint.
Those injured, having contracted these fraudulent services that included, in some cases, round-trip trips with hotel nights during their stay, were expelled from the national territory because they were in an irregular situation when the falseness of the reservations was detected. In other cases, travelers, once they had made the departure flight and wanted to return, found that their tickets were not validated or that, even, the flights for which the travel agency had provided them with the locator, did not exist, being in another country totally unprotected, with little possibility of claim and with the only alternative of buying new plane tickets to return with the consequent economic damage generated.
As a result of the investigation, at the end of last March and in the town of Mollet del Vallés (Barcelona), the arrests of the 2 people responsible for the Travel Agency were made and in whose private accounts and Bizum the revenues of the amounts paid by the alleged frauds were made. After their arrest, they were brought to justice.
The total sum of the scams detected amounts to an amount greater than 40,000 Euros.
To avoid this type of fraud, the following guidelines are given:
· If the purchase of flights is made through the Internet and there is its own channel of communication, establish all contact from this same channel to avoid fraud.
· If after buying flights with or without a stay online, changes are requested in the form of initial payment or additional payments, distrust, as it could be a scam.
· If you have been the victim of a scam by bank transfer, Bizum or any other telematic means, report the same day so that agents can try to block the money provisionally.
We put at your disposal the telephone number 062 and also the free alert service for mobiles app AlertCops; any information you want to provide or collaborate in the field of prevention of smuggling and other criminal offences, technological crimes or environmental crimes, will be treated discreetly and anonymously.