After a bank fell victim to a fraud scheme, Unicaja faced a court order to compensate Social Security with 172,000 euros. The case centers on a man who acted as his late stepfather for 18 years to keep receiving a pension. A Supreme Court ruling dated March 3 clarified how the scam operated. The offender, linked to the El Periódico de España publication from the Prensa Ibérica group, had access to the deceased account, was sentenced to two years, and was caught while attempting further theft using a counterfeit identity. The fraudster later declared bankruptcy and visited a bank branch with a forged document to obtain a new card tied to the deceased man’s account, enabling ongoing looting.
The man, now 67, signed his stepfather’s death certificate when the elder passed away in June 1999 but did not report these events to Social Security. His pension at that moment, issued at a Malaga bank, amounted to 46,810 pesetas, roughly 233 euros, while the illegitimate activity had accumulated a total of 172,077 euros in unjust gains.
frozen account
From 1999 to 2007, a judge identified several small transfers, typically six to eight euros in both directions. These micro-transfers indicated money moved from the stepfather’s account and returned shortly after by the fraudster. In 2010 the offender went to prison for a separate matter, which halted activity on the account for six months.
Activity resumed in December that same year, and by March 2015 Unicaja halted operations due to irregularities in the customer file and the absence of a valid identity card for the account holder.
According to the General Secretariat of Penal Institutions, the fraudster could not legally use the pension funds paid to his stepfather, yet he waited another year and, in March 2017, slowly regained control of the account.
The bank as the liable party
In March of the same year, an individual visited an Unicaja branch, altered personal data, and printed and signed the customer file. He presented a fake identity card that succeeded in obtaining a new passbook and access to the funds.
Three months later, as the scammer sought to maximize gains, staff detected possible fraud and potential identity falsification. The bank then faced the prospect of returning the money already deposited into the account, which totaled 42,868 euros between 2013 and 2017, while a dispute arose over who should shoulder the remaining 129,209 euros plus interest.
The scammer’s bankruptcy was accepted by the judiciary in 2019, shifting immediate secondary liability to the bank that had allegedly allowed access through a forged identity.
Taking the matter to a higher level, Unicaja attempted to criminalize pre-2013 losses, but the Supreme Court rejected the argument, noting that continuing fraud can erase the statute of limitations.
Two decades on grandmother’s pension
The recent ruling is not an isolated incident. In Madrid’s County Court, another case exposed a man who drew his deceased grandmother’s pension for twenty years. He received six months in prison after admitting he was unaware of the crime until the UDEF notified him of proceeds from an account shared with his mother, who had died a year earlier.
Court records indicate the three were co-owners of that account, which regularly deposited about 700 euros monthly and funded card purchases until November 2015. The National Social Security Institute later determined the scheme, and the man who had already reimbursed 111,544 euros illegally obtained must return an additional 37,250 euros.