The Civil Guard of the Region of Murcia developed operation ‘Palfit’ to clarify a series of scams against companies in the euro pallet buying and selling sector. During the investigation, the agents dismantled a criminal group, made up of three people, who are attributed with the crimes of fraud, usurpation, threats and coercion.
During the operation, which is still open, the ROCA team (against robberies in the countryside) of Benemérita has so far clarified fifteen crimes committed in several provinces, a figure that may increase considerably.
The investigation began last April, when the person in charge of a company in Fortuna reported to the Civil Guard that he had suffered a scam related to the shipment of the agreed products without having received the agreed amount.
According to the complainant, the perpetrators of the events, by telephone and using fraudulent data from a company in Almería, contracted the purchase of nearly a thousand Euro pallets, simulating the payment by means of a bank transfer receipt, which caused the sending of the products.
A few days later, Fortuna’s company verified that the bank transfer did not materialize and that the agreed money did not reach its destination, thus discovering the scam. After verifying the reported criminal acts, the first steps of the operation took the investigators to a warehouse in the Almería municipality of Pulpí, where the illicitly obtained products were changed from trucks to try to avoid detection.
Once the merchandise was unloaded at the Pulpí warehouse (Almería), it was loaded again and transferred to a company in San Isidro (Alicante), dedicated to the purchase of Euro pallets, requiring payment by immediate transfer.
The modus operandi consisted of contacting companies dedicated to the sale of Europalés by telephone and, fraudulently posing as salespeople from real companies in Murcia and Almería, they bought complete trucks of Europalés. Once in possession of the merchandise at zero cost, they sold it to other companies in the sector. To give credibility to the operation, they simulated payment to suppliers by sending bank transfer receipts by email that, in reality, were never made.
To make police action difficult, the perpetrators used multiple registered telephone lines, impersonating third parties, as well as emails created for this purpose to mislead the victims.
During the investigation, it was discovered that behind the criminal plot there are numerous companies that have been victims of these criminal acts. So far, around fifteen crimes have been clarified whose victims live in Murcia, Cádiz, Seville and Badajoz, although it is estimated that both the number of crimes and the number of victims could increase significantly.
Some of the companies involved in these events were unaware that they were victims of both fraud and usurpation, being aware of the deception after communication from the Civil Guard. On the other hand, several people have been contacted who were unaware that their personal data was being used to register the telephone lines with which the criminal acts now clarified were committed.
During the development of the operation, one of the trucks coming from Villafranca de los Barros (Badajoz), with a load of twelve tons of eruropallets, was intercepted by the civil guards before unloading in San Isidro (Alicante), which made it possible to avoid thus the loss of the merchandise for the company involved and making it available to its legitimate owner.
In addition to thwarting the consummation of the previous scam, Benemérita investigators recovered 2,400 Europalés obtained through deception and located in Almería the three members of the criminal group who were allegedly behind the authorship of these criminal acts, which have been investigated and They have been investigated as alleged perpetrators of the crimes of fraud, usurpation, threats and coercion.
The Civil Guard continues with the open operation and does not rule out new actions and arrests, as well as the possibility that the number of people harmed by these criminal activities may increase. Those investigated, the effects seized and the proceedings carried out were placed at the disposal of the Investigative Court of Cieza (Murcia).
#dismantle #organization #dedicated #defrauding #purchase #sale #pallets #Region #Murcia