Friday morning, May 27. A group of friends having breakfast in a cafeteria A tattooed young couple approaches the Malaga neighborhood of La Luz, chatting and offering contraband tobacco. A lifelong smoker, Antonio (not his real name), who has a habit of keeping lots of cigarettes in his house, is tempted and eventually accepts his offer. two cards at 25 euros each. One is from the Ducal Red brand, and the other is from American Legend, whose prices at the tobacconist are 41 and 40 euros, respectively. Thirty one Euro savings.
As soon as he pays the seller, instinct prompts Antonio to check the merchandise, but just then, two local police officers pass by on horseback and pull the carton out of the way as the Spanish vendors disappear with their bags. Minutes later, a surprise arrives. The American Legend pack includes: a uniform block of cork in which a small piece of marble is placed to add weight. The Ducal Red one is more detailed. Polystyrene is dispensed into each of the ten packs that make up the carton, with their respective packaging and health warnings. Both are laminated.
Antonio explained to La Opinion that his disgust lasted all day. And that refused the report out of embarrassment of admitting that he wanted to buy contraband tobacco, Tobacco would be very expensive if it were real and agents caught buying it. According to Tax Office sources, this citizen would have been killed if the packages had contained contraband tobacco. He was fined 2,000 euros. However, he became a victim of a victim. fake It’s not new, but it’s rare. National Police sources explain it This embarrassment reduces the chances of this scam being prosecuted unless the scammers are caught red-handed., something that has not been in any district of the capital lately. The same version is offered by the Local Police of Malaga, whose sources recall this criminal method many years ago.
The newspaper archive confirms this. In 2013, the National Police arrested four people in Malaga after a fight took place at a gas station in a polygon in the capital. The investigation revealed that one of them was staying there with the other people involved, after realizing that one of them had sold him 15 cartons of tobacco stuffed with cork and nails to look like a real pesos. The seller came with two of his friends, and the meeting ended in a fight. Four were arrested for the resulting fight, while fraud and threatening offenses were added to the seller and the buyer, respectively.
prison sentences
Beyond picaresque, this type of action is expensive. In 2015, the Malaga Court convicted two people who tried to defraud a kiosk in Malaga and a kiosk in Pizarra by offering 26 cartons of contraband tobacco. fungal and nail fillers At a price of two to 2.20 euros per pack. One was sentenced to 3 months and the other 4 months and 15 days in prison for a recidivist offense. Also in 2015, three brothers from Malaga were arrested in Morón de la Frontera (Seville) when they tried to sell 50 cartons of tobacco stuffed with mushrooms and nails. Local Police attributed it to fraud and crimes against industrial property.