Young man arrested for scamming 1,900 euros through SMS in Lanzarote

The arrested man, 20 years of age, is also being investigated for numerous operations, presumably of illicit origin, valued at more than 15,000 euros.

June 15 2022 (09:21 WEST)
Updated in June 15 2022 (09:40 WEST)
Lanzarote Civil Guard Team
Lanzarote Civil Guard Team

The Civil Guard has arrested a 20-year-old for a fraud of 1,900 euros carried out through a technique called phishing. He is also being investigated for numerous operations, presumably of illicit origin, valued at more than 15,000 euros.

The Lanzarote team proceeded to his arrest on May 26 to investigate his alleged involvement in this crime, but it was not until this Wednesday that the facts have been confirmed.

The author of the phishing carried out the scam by sending SMS messages simulating being a legitimate entity, whether it be a social network, a bank or a public institution, among others, with the aim of stealing private information or making financial charges to said victims. These messages invited them to call a special rate number or access a link to a fake website, using the pretext of filling out a template.

Specifically, the Civil Guard has managed to identify him after a complaint from a person who claimed to have had problems accessing their online banking and that they had received unauthorized charges.

The alleged perpetrator impersonated an employee of the banking entity of the complaining person, informing them that someone was trying to make undue charges to their account, so, to be canceled, they should access the link that they were going to receive for that purpose. After entering the link, the victim received an online charge of 1,900 euros made with their debit card.

 

How to avoid this type of scam?

The Civil Guard has given some guidelines to avoid falling into scams of this type, such as checking the sender of any SMS received. "If the name of the company does not appear and we only see a telephone number, it is most likely a fraud," says the Civil Guard.

It also insists on the importance of reviewing the links and carefully reading the message in search of spelling and grammatical errors or translation errors. "A trusted company will never use an insecure URL, that is, one that begins with "http", although URLs that begin with "https" may have also been manipulated by a cybercriminal," they add.

Finally, they remember that banking institutions and identities tend to have most of the necessary information about their clients, so if they try to obtain any more personal data, you should distrust their authenticity.

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