A scam can end with its alleged victim in prison.

BarcelonaIt all started with the announcement of the sale of a car, a Ford Fusion, on the website Milanuncios.comThe seller was a man from Osona, and the vehicle was an old car that cost less than 3,000 euros. It quickly attracted the attention of a buyer, Sergio from Seville. "He said he was a soldier and wanted the car for his daughter," the seller explains. The soldier was in a hurry to buy it. That's why he offered him an advance payment of 300 euros, a sort of guarantee that he would keep. The buyer asked for a photo of his ID because his manager wanted to prepare a reservation contract, and that way he could also begin processing the change of name on the vehicle. "He asked me to take the photo more than once so his face could be clearly seen. I thought it was strange," he says. After sending the photo of his ID, the buyer disappeared. It was the summer of 2021, and he didn't give it any more thought, and years passed. Specifically, it took three years until the Osona salesman received, in 2023, a summons to appear as a suspect in a Coruña court for defrauding a woman of 500 euros. How? With the sale of a vehicle. The Osona man claims that his ID was used to commit this scam, but, for now, the judicial investigation has been successful, to the point that the Prosecutor's Office has requested two and a half years in prison for him. The suspect maintains that he is not the perpetrator of the scam, but another victim. "I am not guilty, I am the victim, and I am caught with nothing. I feel powerless," he says.

When he received the summons as a suspect, the Osona man tied heads: months after the bankrupt purchase of the Ford Fusion, he received a call from the Tenerife Civil Guard asking him if he was involved in the sale of cars in the Canary Islands, as they had indications that his ID could be... He then sent the conversation he had with the alleged buyer, to whom he sent his ID, and that was it.

Report to the Mossos d'Esquadra

Just after being summoned as a suspect in a court in A Coruña, the man from Osona filed a complaint with the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) in Vic for the theft of his identity two years earlier. "I've never been to A Coruña or the Canary Islands," the suspect claims. The scam he is accused of is against a woman who lives in Cambre, a small town ten kilometers from A Coruña. In September 2021, a few days after the failed purchase, a user of Milanuncios.com He expressed interest in a vehicle being sold by a man from Cambre.

According to the complaint, the buyer suggested making a 500-euro reservation using Bizum. The seller, it turned out, didn't offer that banking service and asked him to send his wife to him. Before the banking transaction, he chatted with his wife for a while and sent her an ID. This ID belonged to the man from Osona. Then, instead of issuing a Bizum, he sent her a request to receive it. The woman accepted, and the buyer kept 500 euros from the seller, who filed a complaint with the Civil Guard.

Evidence and investigation

The DNI is the main evidence against the suspect. The Civil Guard also links his name to the bank account where the money went. It's an account opened at Evo Bank (currently owned by Bankinter), and the defendant's defense argues the scammer could have opened it with the Osona man's DNI. The defendant complains that the bank won't provide him with information about how the account was opened. He says his DNI does appear, specifically the photograph he sent to the alleged soldier.

A cell phone was also used in the scam, which the Civil Guard has not been able to directly link to the suspect. The police report claims it's a Movistar phone, but the company has denied this. The suspect has gone to seven different companies asking if there was a cell phone in his name, and all of them have said no.

Now, the investigation into the case is over, and the Prosecutor's Office has filed its indictment, seeking two and a half years in prison for the Osona man. The suspect has already posted an 800-euro bail bond to cover potential financial liability, and his lawyer, José Luis Jordan, has already filed a defense brief arguing that his client is another victim and providing the conversation with the alleged soldier. Since his file includes a police record for the investigation opened in Tenerife, the sentence the Prosecutor's Office is seeking is two and a half years in prison. The Osona man wanted to make his case public also to warn against this "injustice" and also about the consequences that can arise from sending your ID to a stranger. "You shouldn't lose it; they can screw you just by sending it somewhere," he concludes.