New blow to the plots of telephone scams that cause thousands of victims. The National Police that made the call massively Sicario extortion “Also known as.” Sextorsion– And the Son scam in trouble. Among the detainees as members of what the police have defined as “powerful criminal organization” is Ismael Bousnina Obando, aka Salvaconsidered one of his leaders and that accumulates another seven arrests for similar events in recent years. In the baptized as Operation Prota, developed on February 11 and which the Ministry of Interior has reported on Wednesday, a call center has been located in a Benissa Chalet (Alican that went from a few hundred to thousands of euros.
Police estimates that the number of victims exceed 2,000 – although only 86 have filed a complaint so far – and that the now dismantled group could have obtained more than two million euros of benefits with these extortion. At the time of the arrest, the agents intervened several weapons and 250,000 euros – 60,000 of them in cryptoactive ones -, in addition to blocking three homes, about twenty vehicles, including five high -end cars, and 129 bank accounts with balances that add another quarter of a million euros. The plot used a fruit collection company and several hairdressers, all located in Valencia, to bleach the money obtained, as the National Police has detailed on Wednesday in a note. The detainees, seven of whom have entered prison, are accused of crimes of belonging to criminal organization, extortion, fraud, money laundering, drug trafficking and usurpation of civil status. In the operation, 120 agents of the Specialized and Violent Crime Unit (UDEV), of the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) and the Center of Ciberdelinquence (UCC) unit have intervened, Central Center (UCC),
The investigation that has led to the arrest of the extortioners began in March last year when a person went to a police station in Madrid to denounce that he had received the call of a person who had forced him to transfer 6,000 euros to several bank accounts after threatening to reveal to his environment that he contacted with prostitutes. In his story, the victim explained that, indeed, he had tried to make contact with a girl through internet dating pages, but had not succeeded. Despite this, shortly after he began receiving threatening calls from a man who said he was in charge of these women and asked for the payment of an amount of money for the alleged discomfort he had caused by not hiring the sexual service.
The investigations revealed that there were another 13 similar complaints in Madrid and that behind them could be a single criminal group specialized in carrying out this type of extortion massively. To do this, ads inserted in which sexual services were offered in contact pages. In these they use images of women who obtained on the Internet together suggestive messages such as “Sweet University that will make you live unique experiences.” All accompanied by a telephone number. When the victims called, nobody answered. However, thanks to this, the network managed to take the number of a potential victim.
Once they accumulated a large number of phones, the leaders of the plot automatically sent them a common threatening text. The victims who fell into their deception and responded, began to harass them with threatening calls. The procedure was very similar in all cases. The now detained investigated the personal details that these people in their profiles in networks – such as the place of residence, the work or if they had a partner – and then call them on the phone and demand the payment of an amount of money on the grounds that they had arranged an appointment through the website with one of the girls and that they had not attended, causing them an alleged economic damage. If they did not deliver the amount of money, they threatened to spread in their environments that they were users of prostitution services and made them see that they knew details of their lives.
If this was not enough, the plot did not hesitate to move on to death threats to coerce them for it, they presented themselves as members of an alleged gangster group of some country in the old block of this – they said to be called mikail and be from Albania or Romania, for which they imitated the accent of the nationals of these countries – and sent videos in which tortured people appeared of fire or large machetes to intimidate them. The videos had also been lowered from the Internet.
All this were done from the call center that had mounted on the Benissa Chalet and, as stressed on Wednesday at a press conference Javier Romero chief inspector of the Udev, worked every day of the year practically 24 hours a day. One of the agents that has intervened in the operation has detailed that, in a single weekend, they came to make 450 of these calls. “Of them, 26 victims fell into extortion, although only one has denounced at the end,” adds this policeman.
When the victim agreed to pay, the network gave them instructions to make a transfer to an open bank account in the name of what in the police jargon is known as, people who, in exchange for a small economic commission that in this case was between 50 and 300 euros, let their name be used to hire financial products. In this way, the leaders managed to prevent the trail of money from being followed to them. It was in most cases of people recruited in the street, many of them drug addicts, although also friends of the leaders.
The organization was strongly hierarchized. At the head of it was allegedly Bousnina, who had allegedly trained the rest of the organization in this criminal modality “as if it were a franchise,” sources close to the investigation stand out. Salva already had sentences for similar events – a court requirements to fulfill a penalty – and accumulates seven previous arrests, five of them from the National Police and two more of the Civil Guard. In fact, he is considered the alleged leader of the dismantled plot in 2020 in the so-called Lubido-Hezurra operation, cataloged at that time as, then it was estimated that he could have reached. For this fact he was prosecuted in September 2022 by.
Together with Bousnina, a second individual was at the plot cusp. The mother of the latter was the alleged testaferro that appeared as owner of the fruit collection company used for money laundering, while her grandmother was in charge of collecting the money in the different floors that the organization had not to raise suspicions taking advantage of her age. Below them there were several steps. One of them was responsible for imitating the voice of the hitman convincingly, while others were responsible for capturing the mules with which to open the accounts and some were responsible for quickly withdrawing from the bank deposits the money paid by the victims through the ATMs and delivering it to the leaders to prevent it from being blocked.
Finally, on February 11, the police proceeded to arrest those involved and make 22 records in Valencia, Tarrasa (Barcelona) and Benissa (Alicante). In the villa located in this last town – where Bousnina and six other people were arrested – the agents found many phones and electronic devices used to perpetrate extortion, but also indications that the plot was also dedicated to making the so -called scam of the son in trouble in a massive way. This starts with a message to the mobile phone through the WhatsApp messaging application of the type “Dad, I have lost my phone and I have a problem.” On the other side, who does not yet know that he is the victim of a scam, tries to help who believes is his son, who raises the need for money to solve an emergency. It can be the purchase of a new phone, a laptop or any invoice. The transfer is done urgently and the money disappears forever.
It was also discovered that they trafficked “small and medium -scale” drug jacuzzi. Police sources highlight the high standard of living of the main ones involved in the network and put as an example, precisely Bousnina, who lived in a type floor loft And he had several dogs, some valued at about 5,000 euros. The researchers add that despite the fact that the threats simply remained in that, in threats, the investigations revealed that the group did use violence against themselves mules of the organization when they did not correctly comply with the orders.
