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19 - 25 April 2018
by Matt Ford N AT I O N A L P O L I C E i n vestigators have held 79 people in connection with a boiler room style-plot that saw victims defrauded of €2.5 million. It comes after raids on eight offices in Malaga and Spanish capital Madrid, with the three kingpins of the scam among those arrested. O f f i c e r s swooped in the wake of a twoyear probe, an o ff i c i a l s t a t e m e n t c o n firmed. The racket saw low-level gang members place ‘aggressive’ phone calls to small businesses and private individuals with savings, offering bogus highprofit and low risk investment opportunities. Those placing the calls were given scripted replies to typical questions, giving them the best chance of
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Cold call conmen
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€2.5 million boiler room fraudsters held Photo credit Policia Nacional
ISSUE NO. 1711
Newspaper in Spain 2017 & 2018
conning their targets. They also designed professional-looking websites on which ‘customers’ were able to open accounts and operate in an online marketplace with fake contacts in the UK and Bulgaria, plus offshore tax havens including the Marshall Islands and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. The online portals were on several occasions shut
SCAMBUSTERS: Investigators swooped on eight offices in Malaga and Madrid. down by the Spanish National Securities Market Commission, with gang bosses setting up new sites to replace them. Once clients were signed up, they would be hammered with phone calls
Ex mayor sent down ALCAUCIN’S former mayor Jose Manuel Martin Alba has been sentenced to 17 months in prison by a Malaga court for his part in a local corruption case. Martin Alba was sentenced alongside 10 other defendants in connection with the so-called ‘Arcos’ urban corruption case. He has also been fined €600 and he w i l l b e b a r r e d f r o m p u b l i c o ff i c e f o r seven years and seven months following the sentencing. The former mayor was also found guilty of knowingly authorising projects that went against urban planning rules and falsifying official documents. Martin Alba was acquitted of all other charges including bribery and money laundering. A total of 22 other defendants were acquitted of all charges, according to reports. Prosecutors told the court during the
trial that the former mayor granted urban licences “arbitrarily” and took a “passive” approach to the breaking of rules by other officials. The court heard Martin Alba had foregone his responsibilities as mayor by standing aside in the face of projects put forward by friends that were illegal. Josa Mora, an architect with Malaga’s Diputacion, was also sentenced to two years and three months in prison and was fined €900 for falsifying official documents. Several businessmen were also among those found guilty. Two further defendants were found guilty of bribery while employed at the Provincial Collection Fund. A former municipal secretary charged with 10 counts of falsehood due to serious negligence was acquitted by the court which could not establish the truth of the allegations.
from the fraudsters, who persuaded them to sink cash into worthless financial products or non-existent raw materials including gold, corn and oil. They even met face-toface with cautious investors, telling them that they themselves had made thousands of Euros from the same deals. Tw o o f t h e r i n g l e a d e r s had previous convictions, one for fraud, while the third was a lawyer who gave legal advice to the pair.
AN earthquake measuring 4.4 on the Richter scale was recorded in Almogia in Malaga Province at 12.30 yesterday (Wednesday). The tremor struck the area around 53 kilometres below the earth’s surface, with residents not reporting any damage, injuries or other incidents. Axarquia and Malaga Province lie close to the border of the Eurasian and African tectonic plates, which means the area is more likely to have earthquakes. The tremors occur when the plates collide with one another below the earth’s surface.