Four people were detained in Alicante on suspicion of orchestrating a fraud that cost a 25-year-old Finnish tourist, who was working as a stewardess at the Port of Alicante, a total of 10,665 euros. The group included the person in charge of a hostess bar, an employee at the same bar, and two taxi drivers. Investigators assert they facilitated fraudulent charges using the victim’s credit cards by gaining access to the POS, allowing unauthorized transactions to go through. The series of crimes unfolded the same night through transfers and direct charges to the victim’s accounts, while the victim was unknowingly drugged with a mix of substances.
The four detainees range in age from 30 to 52, comprising three men of Spanish nationality and a Romanian woman. Two of them already had prior criminal records, and all four were released on charges after initial investigations.
According to a statement from the Provincial Police Station, the young tourist had been staying in the province intermittently and had recently gone out with friends in the Port area. On a night when the entertainment district was buzzing, a man approached the group, presenting himself as a promoter for a bar and offering free drinks to entice them into the venue.
The party accepted the invitation and entered what appeared to be a bar run by a stewardess. After stepping inside, they decided to drink because the beverages were free, and one of the youths soon began to feel unwell after consuming the drink.
The plan kicked into action quickly. While the young man was becoming ill, a bar employee approached him with a pill and assured him it would help recover. Unaware of the danger, the victim ingested the substance and remained unconscious from that moment until the following afternoon, when friends finally found him near his workplace.
As confusion faded, the young man discovered that two of his credit cards had been stolen. Checking his bank account revealed several transfers totaling around 6,000 euros and multiple charges for taxi services, amounting to approximately 4,665 euros.
Recovered memories indicated that the language on the phone had been switched from Finnish to Spanish, making recall difficult. There were also whispers urging him to remember details, even as his cognitive abilities appeared severely diminished. The attacker’s manipulation extended to the victim’s PIN numbers and the timing of the fraud appeared carefully planned.
Medical testing at a local center confirmed exposure to a mix of controlled substances, including amphetamine, cocaine, cannabis, methamphetamine, MDMA, and methadone. With the analysis providing clear evidence of drugging, the victim proceeded to the police station to file a report and obtain a formal account of the incident. Police investigators concluded that the scheme relied on a psychotropic cocktail to coerce the victim into sharing banking information without consent, enabling the fraud.
The Economic Crime Group of the Alicante Provincial Judicial Police Brigade led the investigation, which began by identifying and detaining two taxi drivers at their terminal on charges of fraudulent charges that were applied to the victim.
The taxi drivers admitted to police that they had given their POS devices to the bar manager so that a customer could be swiped when the men claimed the devices were malfunctioning. In exchange, they received a commission of about 10 percent of the fees, and the fraud reached about 4,665 euros on that single night.
As the inquiry continued, authorities arrested the bar owner and one of the bar’s employees on charges of fraud, maintaining that the victim had consumed drinks inside the building and that the scheme unfolded under their supervision.