Tinder scam in Spain | Legal

After the success of the Netflix series Tinder ScamWe were able to confirm that modus operandi used by its protagonist overlaps with the one used by a woman in a very similar case in Spain that our office successfully brought before the courts.

In our case, the victim was a German executive who met an attractive woman through the Tinder app. The woman lived in Mallorca and she lived in Germany. This is how they begin a long distance emotional relationship that lasted almost a year. During this time, they only see each other face to face a few times. At these rare gatherings, the woman seemed to drive high-end gadgets and wear luxury watches.

That year, the accused and the victim maintained an emotional relationship, which the victim believed was always cordial. As legally proven, the woman managed to convince the victim that she was a person with good purchasing power by pretending to be the owner of a real estate office and beauty salon and the apartment where she lived in Palma de. A semi-detached house in Mallorca, the Canary Islands, and a house in Romania, all of which has proven to be a huge fallacy.

The woman gained the victim’s trust and demanded various amounts of money, taking advantage of the emotional bond. She justified this need by arguing that it was illiquid because it confiscated the court accounts that processed her divorce. Under the pretext that the money would be returned to her as soon as the divorce court lifted the embargoes, she was able to get the victim to make multiple transfers to her during that year, for a total of more than 400,000 euros.

As evidenced by legal proceedings, the victim’s accounts were never confiscated. The woman’s cunning was such that she made the last loan she wanted from the victim after creating a document. special with the appearance of a lawyer’s bill. On this occasion, the woman told our client that she had a lawyer’s bill for the divorce case. She claimed that, in addition to lifting the alleged embargoes, payment of this bill had to be started urgently in order to end her marriage to her ex-husband and thus be able to be with the victim.

The investigation revealed that the bank account number on the alleged lawyer’s bill corresponded to a bank account that the woman opened days ago. This party has openly stated and defended that our client is the victim of a fraud crime, because the emotional relationship is a farce based on lies. The emotional affair that serves the defendant to lend our client’s money and the amounts surrendered, because the victim has always believed that this is a solvent person who has certain liquidity problems and can repay the loan.

Unfortunately, we do not have the support of the prosecutor’s office, which requested the case file, while defending the interests of the victim. During the investigation and later in the trial process, the prosecutor’s office understood that due to the stable emotional relationship between the parties, the criminal charge of the woman could not develop, therefore, the excuse of acquittal in Article 268 of the Penalty was valid. Code. Therefore, it was understood that criminal prosecution was not possible as it was an inherited crime in a stable relationship, and therefore the victim had to resort to civil action to demand the return of the amounts claimed. The defense’s argument was that the sums surrendered were owed and in their case they had to resort to civil action for compensation.

Finally, after years of investigation, several disputes with the Office of the Prosecutor, and a trial, the Palma de Mallorca State Court, realizing that all the elements of the crime of fraud were present, upheld our allegations. As a result, the Palma de Mallorca County Court sentenced the accused to four years and six months’ imprisonment and more than 400,000 euros in damages as the perpetrator of the ongoing fraud. The decision was upheld in all its extremes by the Supreme Court of Justice of the Balearic Islands and finally by the Supreme Court.

Marta Arroyo Vazquez, a lawyer. Head of Criminal and Cybersecurity at Monereo Meyer Abogados