33 people arrested in Barcelona for swindling 50,000 euros from a Cantabrian
The gang took the victim’s SIM card, requested a credit in his name and then looted his online account
The Civil Guard of Cantabria has arrested 33 people, mainly in the town of Hospitalet de Llobregat (in Barcelona), as alleged perpetrators of a crime of fraud through the Internet. The group is accused of seizing more than 50,000 euros of operations from the victim in a single day, through 400 online banking. The investigation, called ‘simswag’, was carried out in two phases in June and July and has been carried out by the cybercrime specialists of the Benemérita.
The investigations have taken time. They began in July 2020, when a resident of Cantabria announced that more than 50,000 euros had been stolen from his bank account. From that moment on, the tracking of the money began, which ended up leading to the identification of the “mules” that had been taking it out and also of the next step in the plot.
The scam materialized using the victim’s remote banking. Once inside their account, the detainees requested a credit worth 30,000 euros in the name of the complainant. This credit was granted and entered and, at that moment, the withdrawals of these funds and the rest that the man had in the account began.
The band carried out a total of 40 banking operations in a single day, of which 35 were through a mobile payment platform and the rest by transfers, according to the Civil Guard, whose experts believe that access to banking online of the victim was produced using the method known as ‘sim swapping’ (duplicate SIM cards).
This method is characteristic because the victim is left without a line on their mobile terminal, since they have made a duplicate of their SIM card, which is the one used by the authors of the scam to operate. Once they access online banking, the SMS they send to the bank to confirm operations are received at the terminal where the duplicate SIM card is installed, which allows fraudsters to validate the transactions.
The Civil Guard followed the trail of money with the bank, the mobile payment platform and with telephone operators
The Civil Guard of Cantabria made multiple inquiries with the bank, with the mobile payment platform and with telephone operators, to obtain data from the recipients of the victim’s money. In this way, it was possible to identify those who were seizing the money, all residents in the province of Barcelona. Once the members of the group have the money in their account, they withdraw it from ATMs to later deliver it to their recruiters, after keeping a commission.
Be careful if you lose the mobile line
Once all of the above were located, they were arrested: it was considered that 30 of them were recipients of the money (they are called “mules”) and the other three were recruiters of the above. About thirty of the detainees are from the Dominican Republic, two from Colombia and one from Spain.
From the Civil Guard it is recommended that whenever a user realizes that they have lost the line on their mobile phone, they contact their operator to ask if a duplicate SIM card has been requested. If so, you must cancel this card.