The Provincial Information Brigade of the National Police of Madrid has arrested two 21-year-old young people who, allegedly, had defrauded other university students from the Complutense (UCM) after false threats of attacks at parties and faculties. «Actually, the attacks with weapons were something anecdotal; The problem is that they obtained the bank details of their victims and opened current accounts with those identities but in which they were the beneficiaries,” explain sources consulted by this newspaper.
At the end of October, a university party was held in which, according to a hoax spread on Instagram and WhatsApp, someone claimed that something similar to a massacre was going to take place. These threats were made in collective groups, from which they obtained telephone numbers of people with whom they later connected. Thus, they deceived them to obtain their personal information. So, with their ID, they opened books in banking entities but whose benefits were redirected to themselves. A book scam but with a very particular origin. Six fraud crimes have been clarified, although the investigation remains open and there could be more arrests and victims.
Around that same time, they issued a threat of a shooting at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters: a photo in a WhatsApp group of an automatic pistol next to a box of bullets and the following text: «With this [sic] I’m going to pour it in your faces, philosophers.
The reactions were immediate. In a chat in 2nd B of Art History, someone wrote: «I don’t know if you have heard, but since I am in the [grupo] And, mainly it’s being talked about out there, I’ll tell you about it too. It’s rumored that there’s some crazy guy who wants to go on a shooting spree on Tuesday. It seemed that it remained a rumor, but it was witnessed by a group and they sent a photo with a message that was anything but peaceful. More than anything, because I think they are going to contact higher-level officials to see if they can communicate what happened to teachers. Because personally I’m already afraid to go all week.
As a result, up to 6,000 students stayed at home for fear of being shot on the designated day. The vice-rector of Students, Rosa María de la Fuente Fernández, issued the following statement: “In light of the events that occurred last Thursday, when an individual in a state of mental confusion and drunkenness rebuked several students and in light of the threat spread on social networks that “may carry out violent action next Tuesday in the faculties of Philosophy and Philology, we want to convey peace of mind to the entire university community.”
It specified that “the UCM Control and Security Unit” was “coordinating the investigations into these events in collaboration with the National Police, as well as taking the necessary reinforcement measures to guarantee security on campus.” That is to say, the academic institution saw signs of verisimilitude. “All available information has been made available to the National Police and some preventive actions have been carried out,” added the vice-rector.
So much so, that an email was provided so that “the university community” could provide “all additional information.” Likewise, they gave telephone numbers to contact the Emergency and Security Attention Center and the Telematic Psychological Attention Service.
It has now emerged that the two detainees had taken advantage of the widespread fear to begin their criminal actions. They went so far as to intimidate the students who reproached them for these messages by committing violent acts against them and their families.
Those arrested, with the students’ telephone data that they obtained in the chats and through social engineering, contacted them by telephone to obtain their identity data or even photocopies of personal documents.
Once they obtained that information, they opened bank accounts to commit scams and other criminal offenses. The efforts carried out by the researchers made it possible to detect up to six criminal actions related to the appropriation of personal data in which scams were committed.
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