A Spanish cyber scammer arrested in Romania with more than 300 complaints throughout the country

Fleeing to the outskirts of Bucharest was not enough to prevent the Spanish authorities from demanding his scams in Spain. Daniel MV, 29, considered one of the most active cyber-scammers in the country and involved in multiple types of scams, such as vacation rentals, hijacking WhatsApp accounts, or the famous son-in-distress hoax, has been arrested in Romania after which has accumulated more than 300 complaints throughout the national territory. A joint investigation by the National Police and the Civil Guard has brought him back to Spain, where he is in provisional prison after being brought to justice in the Investigative Court number 2 of Pamplona. Along with the alleged leader of a cyber-fraud organization, four other people have been arrested in Murcia, Malaga, Alicante and Tenerife, whose alleged role was to help erase the trail of money by moving it through different bank accounts. Investigators have found movements worth 10 million euros in the deposits investigated.

Daniel MV – who a few years ago made his debut as a footballer and other sports players, according to sources close to the case – touched all the known cyber scams, according to one of the agents who participated in the investigation. “He managed to place a false rental advertisement for a property in Madrid or to pose as a banking advisor,” explains this investigator. “He was fully dedicated to this,” he adds. His strength was the creation of false identity documents to open bank accounts and make the trail of money that he supposedly obtained with cyber scams disappear. The agents who searched his home found 55 ID cards, all with his photo, but in the names of other people. With these documents, which at first glance can be seen to be false, he could convince banking entities, through images or a video, to open an account. on-line in his name.

The operation, called Kalinka-Tirano, began almost three years ago, when five complaints were registered with the Civil Guard for hijacking WhatsApp accounts and another eight complaints for these same criminal acts in National Police stations. The same thing had happened to everyone, so a joint investigation was started. The first investigations pointed to an organized group led by Daniel MV, of Spanish nationality and originally from Mucia. The more than 300 complaints that have accumulated in police stations are for a wide range of telematic crimes: hijacking of WhatsApp accounts and requests to send money through Bizum to contacts, scams with vacation rentals, contracting fraudulent microcredits, or the famous son-in-distress scam, in which messages are sent posing as a son who needs an urgent income of money to cover an emergency. All this, without leaving aside the classics, such as impersonating the bank to request the passwords or other confidential information through an email (known as phishing) or send text messages inviting you to download programs that turn out to be malicious, or to inadvertently share confidential information with cybercriminals (also called smishing).

The main investigator and leader of the organization had left Spain “several years ago,” according to police information. Despite the large volume of money that he managed in his accounts, he settled in a modest neighborhood, tried not to attract attention, and was supported by relatives, who also lived in Romania.

Daniel MV had up to 33 judicial requests of various types and from different courts throughout Spain. In three of them they requested his imprisonment. The joint team of Civil Guard and National Police requested the collaboration of the Romanian Police, who located him at a home on the outskirts of Bucharest, where he was finally arrested last February. “The collaboration of the Romanian authorities has been essential to be able to bring him in,” thanks the researcher.

During the search of his home, the agents found an industrial printer to be able to create identity documents, which according to investigations he allegedly used to open bank accounts with the identities of other people and in which the money that had been obtained was later deposited and laundered. illegally. A station was also intervened mined of cryptocurrencies (used to generate cryptocurrencies), an industrial printer, several fraudulent credit cards, falsified Spanish national identity documents and hundreds of card holders ready to be printed. Agents from the Technological Crimes group of the Judicial Police Brigade of the National Police in Navarra and the Organic Unit of the Judicial Police of the Civil Guard of the same regional community have jointly participated in the investigation.

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