The criminal, with more than 2,000 victims behind him, was arrested in a Madrid nightclub after he was identified by an anonymous citizen
The National Police detained Jordi Arias Fernández, known as ‘Lupine’, considered to be the biggest cybercriminal in Spain this Saturday in a well-known nightlife venue in the center of Madrid. The arrest took place after a citizen alerted 091 of his presence to having recognized him after seeing him on a television program. Born in Ponferrada (León), he was in search and capture with eight claims for different scams issued by courts in Ponferrada, Elche, Guadalajara, Albacete, Cádiz and Madrid. It is known as ‘Lupine’ in honor of Arsenio Lupine, the white-gloved thief from the novels of the French writer Maurice Leblanc, also turned into cartoons. At the time of his arrest, agents have seized 12,000 euros in cash.
He was previously arrested in 2019 after two years living in hiding. At that time, he was being tracked by both the National Police and the Civil Guard, as well as regional police officers by virtue of the 26 requests for arrest and entry into prison. He did not have a valid ID and used false identities. He lived from hotel to hotel and with a solitary life away from great luxuries and ostentation, despite having hitmen under his charge and boasting of having had access to 300,000 euros per month thanks to the profit generated by the network of web pages with which he carried out his scams by offering discounted tech products that never reached customers.
Autodidact
He did not have great computer knowledge or studies, although he is a trickster, intuitive and calculating, according to police sources. His arrest came when he wanted to earn a million euros from the Black Friday discount marketing campaign and then retire to live off the money amassed during this time.
He also did not hesitate to pose as a member of the UCO itself and of the National Court – Central Court 6 even asked the investigators, alerted by the usurpation – to intimidate some collaborator whom he suspected had been with money from a scam .
On other occasions, it recruited collaborators from marginal areas, paying 50 or 100 euros to people at risk of social exclusion, preferably between 19 and 21 years of age, who agreed to open bank accounts to later transfer them to the criminal organization. He paid his computer scientist about 25,000 euros and the manager of the “mules” 7,000 euros. When he was arrested, some 80 lottery coupons were intervened: he had convinced a lottery so that, in exchange for buying all the coupons for the day, she would open a bank account to transfer it to him.
The large amount of cash handled by the most wanted cyber scammer in Spain came from failed purchases of electronic products such as mobile phones and game consoles, although air conditioners were offered in summer and heating oil in winter. As on other occasions, the hotel where he was arrested in Madrid had it reserved for a full month, paid in advance, although that did not prevent him from leaving the establishment without giving any notice if he deemed it appropriate.
Multiple victims
The fraud was carried out through websites that used the logo of other trustworthy pages. Then, the number of victims was estimated at 2,400 when reporting this Thursday the arrest of 45 ‘mules’ related to the ‘Lupine operation’. According to his calculations, the money scammed would be around 900,000 euros.
Investigators have verified that on multiple occasions they captured their victims directly in online shopping portals to direct them to their own fraudulent websites. They value the collaboration of Wallapop, one of the link platforms used to subsequently lead the scammed to the thirty fraudulent websites that have been deactivated in the police operation.
The cyber scammer perfected his method and, after getting his victims to provide their mobile phone during the online payment process, he made a call to invite him to download an application on his mobile that supposedly would allow him to track the order. In reality, what the scammed buyer was doing was facilitating the diversion of all the SMS messages that he received on his phone to a terminal belonging to the criminal himself, which was done with the codes sent by the banks to make the last confirmation before authorizing the transaction. charge of a purchase. Some victims had their bank deposits emptied.
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