Madrid Court will decide next week thirteen people accused of defrauding the elderly by selling encyclopedias and those who force paying exorbitant prices to get advice or even unsubscribe as a customer. They did it with at least ten elderly people paying a total of 184,700 euros.
The trial of the defendants, who are tried for the crimes of being a member of a criminal organization, continuing fraud and falsifying official and commercial documents, will start on the 12th. He wants five to seven years in prison. In addition, they pay compensation up to the value of the defrauded money.
According to the prosecutor’s account, between 2011 and 2016 the defendants managed to get 43,000 euros from one victim, 37,645 euros from another, and 40,550 euros from a third. He pocketed about 185,000 euros until someone tipped him off and many were caught “red-handed” with books and documents. While some of the seized papers were about the victims, some were stated to be “stupid and receptive”.
library databases
Their “methods of operation” consisted of sharing databases of clients of companies they worked with by selling books, although they were no longer their own. Thus, they appealed to the elders and were “easily manipulated by deception and coercion.”
In this way, they succeeded Victims pay huge sums “To buy the encyclopedia or even to leave the database, the defendants come to pass the data among themselves. most vulnerable customers with the aim of making big book sales“, detailing the indictment.
The Complete Scam: Seizure Threats
In one of the cases in which the victim lost more than 40,000 euros, one of the defendants called him in February 2015 using data from a customer of his former company and asked him to ask for help. to pay 15,600 euros for a debt allegedly contracted by his sister, already dead and did not become a client of the publisher in question, who would otherwise threaten him will be reported and the house will be confiscated.
Thus, he received an initial payment of 2,300 euros, and then another 12,700 euros, the defendant committed to send him proof of payment, which he never sent.
Next, another accused went to this old woman’s house, disguised as a lawyer. persuaded him that he might be the victim of a scam to accompany him to disclose and thereby gain his trust, after which another defendant called him and will pay 2,000 Euros for this legal servicebecause otherwise they will report him and the flat may be confiscated. Later, another person involved in the case went to the victim’s house twice, where he demanded 5,000 and 10,000 euros from him to buy the book.
other timesthe old woman paid them 5,500 and 4,500 euros. In addition, another defendant made two payments to his account, 1,000 and 2,000 euros, without his consent. The old woman also bought other researched book collections for 3,960 euros.
The prosecution emphasizes that other cases are similar, and in one of them the members of the group left an elderly woman in a difficult economic situation.