Sex shows, debts of thousands of euros and a suicide: a 'Tinder scammer' who pretended to be a woman is put on trial

BarcelonaShe acted like a kind of Tinder scammer, but posed as a woman to deceive men. girl She asked for their help to get out of a webcam sex show company where she was forced to work, and to do so they had to call two premium-rate numbers, which generated bills that in some cases were equivalent to the entire payroll of the victims or their families. The scam continued with messages from a man, who presented himself as the head of the sex show company and demanded more calls to cancel the charges or prevent the line owners—who in some cases were the parents of the victims—from finding out they had fallen for the scam. At least six men made calls or transfers and lost, collectively, almost €27,000. One of them, Àlex, committed suicide before his mother received the bills that left her in debt.

The name behind these phone lines, the various profiles with different identities on dating websites, and the company that profited from them is that of the man now sitting in the dock of the Third Section of the Barcelona Provincial Court. He faces a sentence for fraud and extortion. The prosecution is seeking a six-year prison term, while the private prosecution, representing the family of one of the victims, is requesting eleven. Àlex's mother and sister testified this Thursday, the first day of the trial, to explain the threats and extortion the young man received in the days leading up to his suicide. "He didn't commit suicide for no reason; he was agonizing over the issue, he didn't know how to deal with it, and he decided to leave. What I want is justice," his mother told the court.

Àlex was nearing thirty, had Asperger's syndrome, and worked for a company that employs people with disabilities. He earned around a thousand euros a month, which vanished in the fall of 2021 due to "fake fines," his mother explained. According to the private prosecution's brief, which ARA has obtained, Àlex was subjected to "a continuous web of extortion" that pressured him to transfer money to avoid an alleged fine generated by calls to a premium-rate number. Àlex sent 500 euros, but the demands in calls and WhatsApp messages continued, threatening him with a 6,000-euro penalty if he didn't make more transfers. "Don't worry, I'll be dead by then," Àlex finally told his interlocutor, according to the private prosecution's brief, filed by lawyer Marc Foix. Hours after this conversation, "the psychological pressure he was subjected to by this web of deceit, veiled threats, coercion, and blackmail led to Àlex's tragic suicide." Àlex, accompanied by his mother, reported the charges on his bank account for these "false fines" to the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police). The woman's testimony in court focused on that moment and how her son explained that he had been threatened. It wasn't until November, after Àlex's death, that the woman received the phone bill for October with "almost 24 hours" of calls to a premium-rate number. "My paycheck had disappeared, and the same thing happened in December. In the end, we were ruined," she asserted. The total cost of the calls was €2,400. The accused denies any involvement.

The other victims who testified on the first day of the trial all agreed in their description of the scam. They explained that when they called, there was never anyone on the other end of the line, but the request from the girl The plan was for them to keep the call on for as long as possible. Afterward, a man would contact them, introducing himself as the head of a sex entertainment company. In some cases, he told them to call another number to cancel the charges, and in others, he demanded money transfers abroad. One of the victims lost €15,000 in invoices and transfers.

The accused has been in pretrial detention since May 2024, after being deported from Peru. The calls and messages were linked to the region of the country where he lived, and he was eventually identified. Peruvian police then arrested him and extradited him to Spain for trial. During his testimony, he justified that both the company and the phone lines were in his name because two trusted individuals asked him to sign for them in exchange for helping them find jobs, such as construction work. "I looked up the company's number, I even asked at the police station if it was fraudulent. I didn't see anything strange and I signed," he said. He claims he withdrew all the money he received in cash and handed it over to these people, and he has denied being behind any of the messages the victims received.