A Costa Rican gang was the main support arm for a Spanish organization suspected of making a fraud of at least 6 million euros (more than ₡ 4 billion).
According to the National Police of Spain, the gang obtained the money through fraudulent charges.
How did they do it? They got the number of credit and debit cards, infringing on electronic trading systems or buying illegal data from third parties.
Once they got the money, it was laundered through a network of ghost companies. That’s where the Costa Rican gang came in to play an important role.
The members of the organization based in Costa Rica were responsible for illegally obtaining credit and debit card numbers, using very different methods. They could violate the security systems of electronic commerce to obtain the data for online purchases from the users, or buying the information to third parties,”
informed the Spanish police, in the report published on August 29th.
The Spanish branch, in collaboration with the Costa Rican gang then created phantom companies and contracted point-of-sale terminals (devices for charging with bank cards) to the names of these companies.
In total, six people were arrested in Spain. The arrests were made in Zaragoza, Madrid and La Coruña.
The scams occurred in different countries: Spain, France, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic and Panama.
According to the National Police of Spain, more than twenty bank accounts of the companies involved were blocked and four raids were carried out in the province of Zaragoza.