Alex Trelinski
A romance-seeking Elche woman paid out €200,000 to two scammers with bank transfers made to UK, French, Belgian and Spanish accounts.
Two Spanish women, aged 33 and 73, have been arrested in undisclosed parts of the country.
The victim, 57, made contact in June 2021 with the two fraudsters via a prominent social network site.
They used four different personal profiles, two of which were bogus, to fool their target who was after a romantic relationship.
The online contact blossomed into phone conversations to non-Spanish telephone numbers.
The scammers made the woman believe that they were looking for love and concocted a series of stories as to why they were in financial trouble and needed her help.
After reeling her in with the ruse, they supplied her with bank account details and card numbers for her to make transfers to.
A series of deposits saw one fraudster get a total of €160,000 while her cohort received a more modest €60,000.
The victim eventually released that she had been hoodwinked and she filed a complaint with the Policia Nacional in Elche last May.
Police said that up to six other people were involved in a chain of scams and are continuing their investigation.
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