The judge sends Fernández Díaz's former number two to prison.

MadridUnconditional imprisonment for the former deputy leader of the Interior Ministry during Jorge Fernández Díaz's administration and Mariano Rajoy's government. Once brought before a court this Thursday, two days after being arrested, the judge of the National Court who is investigating him has ordered provisional imprisonment without bail for Francisco Martínez as well as for the hacker José Luis Huertas, known as Alcasec, and a third person arrested, Adrián Molina, are charged. The case being led by Judge María Tardón accuses them of money laundering, discovery and disclosure of secrets, and organized crime.

The investigation, still secret, has so far revealed that the group extracted data from public and private entities through cyberattacks and then marketed and laundered the profits. According to legal sources, Tardón assessed a risk of destruction of evidence or alteration of Martínez's sources of evidence and, in the case of Alcasec, also a risk of repeated offenses and escape. Therefore, she ordered an unconditional imprisonment, with no possibility of avoiding it by paying bail. The judge followed the criteria of the Prosecutor's Office, which had requested this precautionary measure as well as the extradition request for the fourth suspect—theYouTuberÁlvaro Martín, a cryptocurrency expert, was arrested in Andorra.

In this case, Alcasec is believed to be the key player in the cyberattack network that obtained sensitive data on millions of citizens from educational systems, the Civil Registry, pet registries, transportation passes, telephone records, and electricity company billing platforms. The plot allegedly exploited Martínez's personal and professional relationships as a former senior official in the Ministry of the Interior to present itself as a legitimate technology consulting firm, setting up several companies in his name. Fernández Díaz's former deputy was Alcasec's lawyer when he was a minor.

Legal sources cited by Europa Press explain that Martínez testified for half an hour before the judge and denied enriching himself by selling data. He asserted that he only provided legal advice and that what he knew was that Alcasec was developing a search engine that used artificial intelligence to organize information obtained from open internet sources. Sources from his defense had stated in recent days that the former Secretary of State for Security had limited himself to creating two companies for said purpose.hackerin exchange for 1,500 euros and that he allegedly did not administer or manage them.

The National Police reported on Tuesday that in 2024 a series of systematic cyberattacks were detected against the IT infrastructure of public bodies, energy sector companies, ports, transportation systems, telephone networks, and educational platforms. This was the beginning of the case in which a network was alleged to have "developed an integrated technological platform that allowed for the storage, indexing, and marketing of segmented data," according to the police force.