Officers from the Guardia Civil have arrested 26 people as suspected members of a gang involved in fraudulently carrying out inspections and work on gas installations in people´s homes.
Of those arrested, 17 were on the Balearic Islands, 3 were in the Alicante province and the remainder in Madrid and Málaga.
The group would target homes and offer a mandatory inspection of gas installations, sometimes initially by telephone, before carrying out inspection work and often inventing problems so as to force the victims to pay a considerable amount of money for unnecessary work.
This particular group would lull their victims into a false sense of security by quoting low prices initially, such as 50 euro, then inflating the cost of the work, often to as much as 1,200 euro.
Moreover, in some of the homes they also committed a variety of acts of theft, taking valuables and possessions from their victim’s homes.
So far there is evidence of the existence of between 4,000 and 5,000 people who were cheated by the group, who are usually elderly and foreign-born, living in Spain, especially German, English and Dutch residents in the Balearic Islands.
During the investigation, the officers seized extensive documentation, money and supplies that links the group members to the activities, with a potential value of around 4 million euro. The officers searched 8 homes and seized 25 luxury cars, mostly belonging to a rental company in Alicante, 2 motorcycles and other items of interest.
Filed under: http://www.theleader.info/article/43778/
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