The National Police have arrested two British men, ages 37 and 51, in the Alicante municipality of Benidorm. They are accused of fabricating a kidnapping to get money quickly.
The police started looking into the case after Interpol told them that a British person might have been kidnapped in the city. A family member told the British police about the issue and said they had footage showing the supposed kidnapping victim covered in blood while his captor threatened him with a knife.
The agents quickly got in touch with officials at the British Consulate to get the pictures they had gotten from the complainant. The pictures showed the man who was allegedly kidnapped and his supposed captor holding a knife “in a threatening manner,” as the National Police described in a statement.
British authorities also gave the chats in which the kidnapper said he would murder him if he didn’t pay him money to let him go and not hurt him any more.
Because of how serious the events were, the officers at the Benidorm Police Station used all of their resources to keep the alleged victim from getting hurt. They also asked the Kidnapping and Extortion Group of the General Police Headquarters for Judicial Investigations for help right away because the situation was so “complex.”
After that, these specialised agents from Madrid were able to get in touch with the complainant, who was a relative of the kidnapped man. The complainant sent them a picture of the alleged captor and told them that if 830 euros were not put into the kidnapped man’s account, he would kill him.
A big operation was started at the Benidorm Police Station. Many officers from different brigades, mostly Citizen Security and Judicial Police, were sent out to try to find the alleged kidnapping victim. At the same time, officers from the Madrid Kidnapping and Extortion Group were going through all the information that had been sent to them by the British authorities.
The police investigations that were going on in Benidorm at the time were also stopped so that all available investigators could work together to solve the case as quickly as possible and stop the accused kidnapper from carrying out his death threats.
Finally, after a lot of questions and checks, the agents found the place where the kidnapped victim and his abductor might be. The police say that the man who was allegedly kidnapped stayed at a hotel in Benidorm days before with another British male.
Caught whilst talking in a “friendly” manner
The officers quietly spread out about the hotel, where they set up surveillance and made plans for the possible rescue of the kidnapped man. At one point, they noticed two men leaving the hotel who looked like both the kidnapper and the kidnapped man. They were talking “in a friendly and polite way.”
The officers swiftly stopped both males and then identified them. The police found out that the supposed abduction victim had been faking the kidnapping to get money immediately when they asked her what had transpired. The two males were subsequently taken into custody for allegedly committing fraud and making fake reports of a crime.
Also, when the police took his fingerprints and recorded his information, they found out that the person who was accused of kidnapping had used a fake name when he checked into the hotel and when he talked to police about where he was and how he was arrested. As a captive, the cops read him his rights again because he was accused of stealing someone’s identity.
After the police did their job, the inmates were turned over to the duty investigating court in Benidorm.
