Forced to beg and scam: an eighty-year-old man is freed from a criminal network

BarcelonaThey used advertisements to adopt or buy puppies. They asked for an initial payment for the animal and then, little by little, demanded further transfers for vaccinations, transport, microchipping, a cage... When the string of payments ended, they vanished, and the client never saw a trace of the pet they had bought. This was just one of the fraudulent activities carried out by the criminal network that the Civil Guard has dismantled in Vizcaya, in the Basque Country. The organization used multiple phone lines, bank accounts, and false or stolen identity documents to deceive buyers. Three members of the clan even controlled an octogenarian man, forcing him to beg. They isolated the elderly man from his family and also used his information to open bank accounts with which they committed scams exceeding €36,000. Furthermore, the illegal activity didn't end there. As detailed by the Civil Guard, the criminal group also fraudulently received social benefits—guaranteed income and minimum living income. In fact, the police force estimates that the clan improperly received over €560,000 in social benefits. Finally, they used the money obtained through scams and illegal social benefits to invest up to €55,000 in cryptocurrencies.

19 arrested

The police investigation began following a complaint in February 2025, when a person explained that they had been scammed after paying €280 for the supposed adoption of a puppy, without ever receiving the animal or being able to recover their money. The Civil Guard has now dismantled the network, freed the elderly man, and arrested eighteen people in Vizcaya and one in Burgos. Three other people are also under investigation as part of the operation. Agents also detected 57 bank accounts and 23 telephone lines linked to the organization, which have been frozen by court order. So far, 121 victims of fraud and ten victims of identity theft have been identified in some thirty provinces across Spain, including Barcelona, ​​Girona, Tarragona, and Lleida. The detainees are accused of crimes including ongoing fraud, money laundering, identity theft, membership in a criminal organization, human trafficking, and mistreatment without injury.