The National Police have arrested 21 men of Indian origin, accused of defrauding elderly British tourists in the south of Tenerife for tens of thousands of euros, in a scam involving buying cheap electrical items but charging several thousand euros to their cards which they didn’t realise until they had returned to the UK, as reported previously by the Canarian Weekly.
The investigation for Operacion Delhi started in started in November last year and culminated with a raid of the suspects homes in the municipalities of Adeje and Arona on Monday (June 5th), which involved more than 100 agents from various collaborating police forces including Europol.
In total, 21 people were arrested including the main leaders of the gang, at six addresses in the Fañabé area (Adeje) and the Las Viñas residential complex in Playa Las Americas (Arona). Also 11 shops were sealed by the judicial authority as they are under investigation, as well as a tax consultancy office (gestors) in Parque Europe, in front of the Villa Cortés hotel, in Playa de las Américas.
In the raids, agents seized 1.3 million euros in cash, high-value jewellery and eleven high-end vehicles, including Mercedes and Porsches. In addition, they blocked 42 real estate properties and more than 300 bank accounts, and seized numerous electronic devices for taking payment (TPV), computer equipment, and various paper documentation.
Following the arrests a judge ordered provisional detention for the five main members of the criminal group.
The Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) of Santa Cruz de Tenerife received several complaints for scams that had the same characteristics. The victims were foreign tourists over the age of 70, who said they had been scammed, after detecting fraudulent charges made on their cards in electrical shops in the south of Tenerife that were run by citizens from India.
The tourists were touted when walking past the shops under the pretext of selling them some cheap electronic device. The group was perfectly structured and there were several levels of participation. In the first were the ringleaders, who were dedicated to introducing illegally obtained money back into the system (laundering). They were also in charge of completing fraudulent card charges and controlling lower-level personnel.
Then there were the so-called first-level consorts: analyzers and sellers who made the "second sales", that is, the illegal charges on the cards through dataphones that moved through various businesses under their control. And thirdly, were the second-level consorts or helicopters, as they were known to the gang, who recruited the right tourists to achieve their goal and made their "first sales" to them.
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Outside several stores in Las Américas, the leaders placed several recruiters, who offered electronic products at a very good price. If they showed interest, they were taken to the shops, where they were offered tea or coffee to win their trust. At that time they took information from them, such as the hotel where they were staying and the most important fact: what day they were returning to their country.
This was so when those affected realized the deception, they were already back home in their country and it was more difficult for them to report it to the Spanish police.
The National Police is taking steps to try to locate new victims of the plot, with the aim of offering them the possibility of reporting and better understanding the scope of the massive fraud against the elderly holidaymakers.
At this moment in time there is no indication as to the scale of the fraud, except that it is expected to run into several millions of euros.
