Sophisticated Tenerife Fraud Network Brought to Justice
For two years, between May 2019 and May 2021, a criminal organisation based in the south of Tenerife, specifically in the municipality of Arona, carried out a sustained, methodical, and highly specialised illegal operation. This was not a group carrying out isolated or improvised crimes. It was an organisation dedicated to defrauding thousands of people who fell for their deception. Ultimately, the group forming the top of this network was arrested, imprisoned, and tried by the Provincial Court of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
Overwhelming Evidence Leads to Guilty Plea
The evidence against them was so overwhelming that they agreed to a deal with the Public Prosecutor’s Office, validating all aspects of the incriminating report in exchange for a reduction of the initial sentence requested. The six defendants were sentenced to six years in prison and ordered to pay €1.7 million in compensation for the crimes of fraud (four years) and membership of a criminal organisation (two years).
How the Complex Scam Operated
The court described in its ruling a stable, hierarchical structure with a division of labour, whose sole objective was to obtain money through unauthorised bank transfers and make it disappear from the traditional financial system. The structure had several levels. At the top were the accused, who coordinated operations and made decisions. On the lower rungs were hackers responsible for recruiting victims and an extensive network of financial intermediaries—more than 114 people—who knowingly lent their bank accounts for money of illicit origin.
These ‘money mules’ (as they are known in police jargon to those who play this role in financial scam organisations) allowed the defrauded funds to be received without raising immediate alerts and facilitated their subsequent withdrawal in cash or redistribution.
The Deception: Fake Texts and Cloned SIMs
The fraud almost always began in the same way. The victim received an SMS pretending to be from their bank, alerting them to a security problem or suspicious access. The message included a link. Upon clicking it, the user accessed a fake website, identical to the official one, where they entered their login credentials. Sometimes, the deception was completed with a phone call from a supposed account manager requesting the verification code sent by the bank.
With this data, the organisation accessed online banking and ordered transfers without consent. To guarantee the operation’s success, the group resorted to SIM card cloning. By activating a second card associated with the victim’s number, they rendered the original line inoperative and received the bank operation confirmation messages themselves. During this time, the account holder only noticed their phone had lost signal.
Laundering the Millions
Once the transfer was executed, the money began a complex journey. It passed through the mules’ accounts, was split into multiple sends, withdrawn from cash machines, or converted into cryptocurrency through exchange platforms. The sentence details the use of exchanges, digital wallets, and cold wallets like Ledger, easily transportable and difficult to trace. Some funds were sent outside Spain, particularly to Italy, where other members of the organisation—who could not be identified during the investigation—were located.
Total Compensation Exceeds €2.5 Million
The factual account is exhaustive: dates, amounts, account numbers, failed and successful operations, cash refunds, and purchases of crypto assets. From this meticulous analysis emerges the first key figure of the case: €1.70 million. This is the money directly defrauded, taken from the accounts of Spanish and Italian victims as an immediate result of the deception.
But the case did not end there. The Provincial Court also addressed the civil liability derived from the crime, which required a broader view. Identifying the fraud was not enough; all those harmed had to be compensated. This calculation included the individualised amounts for numerous victims, specific operations such as that suffered by a company through the manipulation of its account on an e-commerce platform, and the corresponding legal interest. The result was the imposition of total compensation set at over €2.53 million.
Appeals Rejected by Higher Courts
Faced with the prosecution’s highly detailed evidence, the accused opted for a guilty plea. They accepted the facts, the legal classification, and the sentences: four years in prison for aggravated continued fraud and two years for membership of a criminal organisation, plus personal fines depending on their degree of involvement in the plot. Despite the agreement, the sentence could be appealed, which the defences of the six convicts did, but the High Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC) confirmed the ruling in all respects.
The convicts appealed to the Supreme Court. They did not question the facts or the financial figures, already sealed by the guilty plea. The appeal focused on legal aspects: the regularity of the procedure followed, the validity of the consent given, and the potential violation of the fundamental right to effective judicial protection. The scope of the civil ruling was also debated from a strictly legal perspective. The Supreme Court rejected all grounds of the appeal, endorsing that the plea was freely given, that there was no defenselessness, and that both the sentences and the compensation were in accordance with the law.
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