The Civil Guard in Alicante has arrested a man who posed as a priest to scam clergy. The arrest took place in the Valencian town of Aielo de Malferit, one of his most recent known addresses, following a complaint filed by the parish priests of Catral and Bigastro, from whom he allegedly obtained more than 15,000 euros to address financial troubles. During the investigation, authorities uncovered a dozen pending judicial claims in other courts across Spain for similar acts. In Asturias alone, he faced nine charges of the same scheme during 2020.
Following his lengthy criminal history, the Ontinyent court, to which he was brought for processing, ordered his imprisonment. The detainee, represented by lawyer Francisco González, pleaded not to testify, and now awaits an appearance before the Orihuela court that is handling the fraud cases in the province. [Citation: Guardia Civil press release, 2024]
Between one complaint and another, there were just five days in between, on April 25 and 30, and the modus operandi was nearly identical. A man would ask a parish priest for help to visit his ailing father in another town. To seal the deception and win the victims’ trust, he would connect them with a supposed ecclesiastical figure who would corroborate the story. The victims did not realize that the supposed priest they spoke with by phone was the same person posing as the distressed son they were helping, and no anomaly was detected. The investigators concluded that both scams were carried out by the same individual. [Citation: Local law enforcement report, 2024]
In Catral, the first report was made by the parish priest who recounted that in January a young man appeared at his home claiming to be a local neighbor with a dying father in Salamanca. He said he needed money to travel with his family to the other city to be with the ailing relative, and that he had not had contact since becoming a permanent deacon. To verify references, the priest gave the caller the number of a Salamanca priest who would assist in the difficult moment. The Catral priest called the other priest and spoke at length with him, forming a distant but genuine friendship over months. The cleric ended up leaving the supposed son with 300 euros in hand for the trip, but the story did not end there. [Citation: Catral parish report, 2024]
Portrayed as a health emergency and inheritance matter, the caller kept the ruse going by talking about the father’s illness. Eventually the father died, and the caller claimed a 70,000 euro inheritance plus two properties, which could not be accessed until the inheritance tax was settled. Desperate for funds, the aides kept sending money—five transfers in total—amounting to about 14,800 euros. Suddenly the phone lines went quiet. It was only then that the parish priest realized he might have been a victim of a scam. The priest himself later told investigators he was so convinced his interlocutor was a priest that doubts about his own suspicions briefly surfaced. [Citation: Catral case file, 2024]
In the Bigastro case, events unfolded in parallel with Catral. The priest there reported that a phone call had come from a supposed Salamanca priest seeking help for a fellow church deacon who faced a grave illness and needed money for his family. The aid was 500 euros, with a promise of repayment, and the son in trouble came to collect it at the parish home. [Citation: Bigastro parish report, 2024]
The investigation led officers to trace a trail of fraudulent identities, revealing that the phones used by the victims were registered to people who did not appear in any police database. One person even reported the loss of their identity card. The Civil Guard concluded that the fake priest did more than impersonate clergy: he also assumed other people’s identities to set up phone lines under their names and to stay in hotels using false identities. The call patterns pointed to Valencia as a potential hideout. Call records showed numerous communications with other clergy in the area, suggesting there could be more accusations to come. Across Spain, additional reports emerged in Cádiz, Santander, Córdoba, Ciudad Real, Lugo, Palma de Mallorca, Huelva, León, Huesca, Alicante, and Cangas de Narcea. [Citation: National fraud task force, 2024]