A man and a woman arrive at a store in Madrid to sell three golden jewels. They intend to get 1,000 euros: they say it is 18-carat gold. The employees carry out various checks to verify their authenticity and, suspecting that they could be false, call 091. This is how an organized group that operated throughout the Community of Madrid was arrested.
In total there are three detainees - two men and one woman - as allegedly responsible for seven crimes of fraud and identity theft. This group introduced pieces of plated silver jewelry that they sold as gold jewelry in the legal market, according to the Madrid Police Headquarters.
The red-handed arrest of two of those arrested occurred on July 26, when agents of the National Police were required to go to a gold trading establishment in the Madrid district of Retiro.
The police efforts made it possible to verify that these same people, along with a third man, had made up to six similar sales in six different establishments in the Community of Madrid in previous days, managing to acquire profits of more than 5,000 euros.
In addition, at the time of identifying these two people, the police noticed irregularities in their identity documents. Specifically, the woman used a passport that corresponded to another person. Therefore, those arrested are also charged with a crime of identity theft.
After the arrest, the agents found among his belongings almost 2,000 euros in cash, false documentation and manipulated pieces of jewelry.
The scam used by this criminal group consisted of using silver jewelry to which they applied a significant gold plating to pass them off as 18-carat pieces. This manipulation made it possible to deceive the employees of these establishments when carrying out the first verification tests.
Once the sellers had left with the money, those responsible for the gold trading trade, after doing more exhaustive tests, realized that they had been scammed.
After the arrest of these two people red-handed in Madrid, the police investigations focused on identifying the third member of the criminal group. Once achieved at the beginning of this month of August, this man was located and arrested in the city of Barcelona, for participating in the previous events.
