Salvador had enough of a smooth talk to charm people with his televangelist tricks. Dressed as the commander-in-chief of the chaplains of Spain, France or wherever he found himself, he sold exotic banknotes of supposedly high value to help people with financial problems in meetings in hotels or video conferences. “People left convinced that they had made the deal of the century,” explain the Civil Guard. But the trick turned out to be total, Salva was just a food delivery man from Sanlúcar de Barrameda capable of tricking victims with little financial knowledge that the currency he bought for a few euros was worth thousands.
The false military chaplain has ended up arrested, along with four other cronies – his partner and other relatives – accused of creating a plot that would have swindled 1.5 million euros from at least 200 people. They raised the artifice from Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cádiz), where the ringleader of the plot had bought a property worth 300,000 euros, the former headquarters of a bank, which he equipped every train with his most varied tastes. There the Civil Guard of Cádiz found military berets and African and Asian banknotes with which they supported scams that made them earn a lot of money “in a short space of time”, as explained by the Cádiz Command, after the statement of the so-called operation Chaplain.
The operation, 15 days ago but revealed this Sunday, took place with Salvador as an inmate in the Puerto III prison, although investigators assure that he maintained the criminal activity with the help of the other detainees. He ended up there earlier this year after failing to further delay his entry to answer for his involvement in a previous scam, the Curruscofor which he was arrested in 2014. At that time – in which 40 people ended up being arrested for cloning bank cards to buy properties in Nigeria – he was only “an intermediate level” of the plot, as explained by a source close to the current investigations. But Salvador, who is now around 40 years old, learned and decided to set up a scheme based on remission bonds, a financial product based on investing with the expectation of a subsequent revaluation that allows a more advantageous exchange for the interested party, according to the Armed Institute.
The dealer did not have the necessary permission from the National Securities Market Commission, nor did he base his business on African and Asian banknotes that had the slightest value. “He bought them on AliExpress or Amazon for euros or cents and convinced the victims that they were worth much more,” explains the same source close to the investigations, in reference to the currencies from Zimbabwe, Mozambique or China that they used. He even confessed to his audience that he was already “very advanced in creating his own currency,” based on these bills that were supposed to increase in value imminently and exponentially.
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Salvador and his accomplices posed as an order of military chaplains from Spain, France, Asia or Oceania of which he was the general commander. The artifice was completed in video conferences or meetings in hotels in which they deployed a whole catalogue of persuasion, halfway between stratagems typical of collective sales and televangelists. In the face-to-face meetings they even camouflaged accomplices among the public to encourage them to applaud and interact. The agents of the Money Laundering Section of the Civil Guard of Cadiz who followed the surveillance of these meetings were surprised by how the victims left the meetings “totally convinced” that they were making the right investment.
But the artifice faded some time after they paid the money through Paypal, bank transfers and even bitcoins. The scammers, people with little investment knowledge, saw that the supposed benefits did not arrive and that the contract they had signed supported by the photos of those supposedly valuable bills had no value. Instead, the group created an entire corporate and financial network, in different European countries such as the United Kingdom and South America, as a way to channel the significant profits they obtained in just one year.
The investigation has managed to locate real estate assets valued at 1.5 million euros, among which is the old bank branch and two large plots of land in Sanlúcar. Salvador also acquired various high-end cars – such as BMW, Jaguar or convertibles – and furnished the first property with the most varied whims: from a collection of Harry Potter objects to a Betis crest. “What it’s like to not know what to spend your money on,” they say ironically from the research environment.
The Civil Guard, whose investigation has been supervised by the Sanlúcar mixed court acting as guard, has already located 200 victims, but suspects there could be many more. The Laundering Section of the Command asks those people who may have been affected by this criminal group to contact the Civil Guard unit of Cádiz, through telephone 956293408.
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