The National Police have arrested two young men, aged 21 and 23 and of Algerian and Spanish nationality respectively, for defrauding a total of 39 young people aged between 18 and 22 by contracting microcredit, according to police sources.
The Technological and Economic Crimes Group of the Cartagena Police Station launched an investigation following a complaint from a girl who claimed to have been the victim of a scam by a friend of her gang, who had proposed to the group to register on a website, as he knew how to earn 300 euros easily.
This initial complaint was followed by that of another friend of the group who had also agreed to carry out this operation.
The perpetrator urged his friends and acquaintances to register on a loan application website in order to receive 300 euros and in exchange for making a bizum of 150 euros, he would activate codes so that they would not be asked to pay back this amount.
In addition, those who agreed, he offered them the possibility of continuing to recruit others in exchange for a small commission ranging from 20 to 50 euros.
Initially, the victims were recruited by word of mouth, but later, they began to be recruited through social networks.
In this sense, young people who use social networks on a massive scale are especially advised not to trust advertisements offering magic formulas to earn money or work from home, if they do not want to fall into the nets of these groups.
Scams involving supposed investments in cryptocurrency with an immediate return of large sums of money deserve special mention.
After a couple of months, as there were many people trying to get 300 euros under these conditions, the main perpetrator managed to get two people to start collaborating with him, both in attracting clients and in collecting the commissions he demanded.
They were a man and a woman, both of Spanish nationality, who took a percentage of the fraudulent commissions.
The investigations carried out by the agents were able to identify 39 victims throughout Spain who had contracted a total of 46 loans amounting to 6,900 euros.
Many of those affected did not want to file a complaint because they did not want to go to court and claimed to have paid back the money.
In reality, the victims were taking out a loan of 300 euros which offered them the possibility of enjoying this amount without having to pay interest if they paid it back in less than 30 days, as long as it was the first microcredit they had taken out with this entity.
