Electricity bill scams have become a worrying pattern, and the Otea association has warned its members that perpetrators might attempt to exploit trusted routines. On Tuesday, a Ribera de Arriba hotelier received a remarkably convincing call from someone claiming to be Alejandro, a representative of a Total Energy marketer. The caller spoke with unusual familiarity, warning that the business would be shut down within three hours. He had access to detailed information about the establishment: phone number, name, location, and the CUPS counter code. Yet the hotelier, with years of frontline experience in the industry, sensed something off and pressed for the reasons behind any supposed outage. The caller reassured him that the problem involved an energy efficiency certificate that had not been submitted in the last three months, a claim that did little to reassure the hotelier who demanded more concrete information. When pressed for more specifics such as a last name, the impostor’s confidence began to crack. The attacker then resorted to embarrassing the hotelier and even attempting to manipulate family members to lend credibility to the ruse. The scheme did not even bother to try to simulate a real call leg by maintaining the line in a live state; the attempt fell apart before it could proceed. The next step a typical scammer would push is an offer to rectify the crisis and demand a payment ranging from 900 to 1,500 euros to fix the perceived fault. The operator, however, stood firm and will report the incident to the Ribera de Arriba barracks on Thursday as a cautionary note to others.
The hotelier’s energy consultant says this is not an isolated incident. Several other clients faced identical attempts in the weeks prior. “In this case, the caller claimed to be a marketer for Iberdrola, and the outcome was the same,” the consultant notes. A client contacted the consultant to verify the distributor’s involvement, only to discover the claim was false. The experience mirrors what many trust-aware operators have observed recently, underscoring a broader pattern of social engineering against energy customers and service providers.
Experts emphasize that legitimate distributors will not demand advance payments or threaten immediate disconnection. If documents appear missing or delayed, a formal notice will typically come with standard procedures and timelines, not a rushed, high-pressure demand for funds. The consultant’s guidance is clear: never yield to pressure or share sensitive information over the phone with a caller who cannot be independently verified. The Alejandro method aligns with a wider profile of fraudsters who have operated across multiple regions, shuffle identities, and repeatedly surface in different towns after prior arrests. Awareness and verification remain the most effective defenses against this deceptive practice, helping safeguard hotels, small businesses, and households from financial loss and reputational damage.