Two arrested for inventing the hoax about the shooting in the Complutense to steal data and commit scams with them

A month ago, during the first days of November, threatening messages towards students at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) began to circulate in various WhatsApp groups and social networks. “With this I’m going to dump it in your faces, philosophers,” said one of them, who accompanied the phrase with the image of a gun and several bullets.

At the same time, rumors began to be published about a shooting planned for Tuesday, November 5, around the Faculty of Philosophy, which frightened many students and, according to the National Police, they managed to prevent more than 6,000 students from attending class on day on which the attack was supposed to take place.

While the hoaxes spread, the UCM asked its students for “calm” and assured that it was investigating the events in collaboration with the National Police, while reinforcing security on its campuses.

The result of these investigations has resulted, for the moment, in the arrest of two 21-year-old young people accused of spreading hoaxes about possible terrorist attacks in the city through instant messaging applications and, subsequently, stealing the data obtained in the chats to commit scams on the internet.

According to police sources, those arrested are those who circulated photographs of firearms and ammunition. They began doing so on October 31 during a student party and their messages quickly achieved great virality due to their massive dissemination through the aforementioned channels.

When several students reproached this action, those arrested threatened to commit violent acts against them and their families. Subsequently, those investigated obtained personal data from the student community through the chats themselves in which information about the attack and other social engineering tricks had been falsely disseminated, and they called several of them to transfer their identity data. or even photocopies of personal documents.

With the information collected, the detainees opened bank accounts to commit up to six alleged scams related to the appropriation of personal data. The operation remains open, so new arrests are not ruled out.