The First Section of the Provincial Court will judge next week in Arrecife two defendants accused of defrauding dozens of parents for managing the alleged participation of their children in soccer tournaments. The Prosecutor's Office is asking for three years in prison for them, as well as the return of the money they received for the alleged fraud.
In its indictment, the Public Prosecutor's Office recounts two different episodes. In the first, the victim was a combined team from Lanzarote, who contacted the defendants because they offered to manage participation in the XXV Edition of the "Donosti Cup" International Soccer Tournament, which was to be held from July 3 to 9, 2016 in San Sebastián.
The Lanzarote team was made up of 43 children and young people and the defendants were asking for 680 euros per participant, to cover both registration and accommodation. Most of the parents faced this payment in three installments, until they all handed over a total of 27,467 euros, without then receiving what they had agreed.
According to the Prosecutor's Office, the defendants "at no time had any intention of managing the team's participation" in the San Sebastián tournament, nor of "returning to the parents of the affected minors the amounts they had handed over; causing the latter the consequent economic grievance."
A second scam
The Public Prosecutor's Office includes a second episode that occurred shortly after, also in 2016, when they allegedly used the same modus operandi, but to scam a soccer club from Vicálvaro, which intended to participate in a Summer Tournament in Lanzarote.
In this case, there were 18 participants, including 15 minor players, the coach and two auxiliary members of the team. When the alleged scam was uncovered, they had made four payments for a total of 3,064 euros, which were supposedly going to be used for registration in the tournament and accommodation expenses in Lanzarote.
To this, the Prosecutor's Office adds that the Vicálvaro soccer team "contracted through a travel agency the management of the trip from Madrid to Lanzarote, paying a total of 3,546 euros for the 18 round-trip plane tickets; an amount that has not been recovered, causing them the corresponding economic damage."
For this reason, together with the prison sentence, it requests that they be sentenced to return 6,610 euros to this team, also covering the payment of the plane tickets, and 27,467.35 euros to the Lanzarote combined team.
The trial is scheduled to begin next Monday, November 7, and to last for four days, due to the number of witnesses and experts cited.