Out of the blue our enquirer was contacted by Financiera Oficial, in particular Anna Hernandez who imparts good news. According to court documents sent by her, our enquirer he has been awarded €28,200 for a case he was blissfully unaware of. The case was presented against Ramirez & Ramirez whom our enquirer cannot remember having any dealings with. For those who remember, Ramirez & Ramirez were nothing short of a scam law firm who were connected to other less savoury companies.
According to Anna Hernandez, all our enquirer had to do is transfer their legal fee for handling the case. The amount required was 10% of the claim being €2,820. This amount could be charged to a credit card but had to be paid through Transferwise, this would invalidate any chance of obtaining a refund if things went wrong as Transferwise would be deemed to be a third party not the supplier of the service thus rendering Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Acts 1974 useless. We say “if anything goes wrong”, believe us when we say, it will go wrong, no ifs, buts or maybe’s.
After the fee is paid, the full claim amount would be delivered either by bankers draft or bank transfer within 14 days, problem is it won’t.
Our research
The internet domain address quoted on the correspondence from these scammers is actually real, although it was only registered on the 26th January 2021. They have produced a website to go with the domain but it has no substance or content, there are no pages except for the home page which looks like this:
Overall, this instils no confidence.
The address quoted in Madrid actually belongs the Audiencia Nacional, Sala de lo Penal or translated National Audience, Criminal Chamber. If these scammers were indeed part of this court would this have not been clarified in their communications? From research it appears that a description of the work carried out by this court is as follows:
“The central investigating court is in charge of investigating crimes of terrorism, against the Crown, large-scale drug trafficking, economic crimes that cause serious damage to the national economy”
We think you will agree this is a far cry from trying a case relating to petty timeshare fraud, which incidentally was carried out in Malaga province so would it not be fair to say that any case relating to this would be tried in the Malaga courts, obviously not.
On researching the telephone number it reveals that “this number is not allocated to a provider”. Basically this means that the number is not allocated by mainstream providers like Movistar, Orange, Vodaphone etc. It is likely to be provided by a voice over internet protocol provider (VOIP). This system shows no provider and it is possible to have any global number anywhere in the world. In this case, although the dialling code id is Madrid, the company could be trading from anywhere.
The Documents
To add credibility to this scam, our enquirer received emails, redacted copies may be viewed here.
More importantly, a copy of the court judgement was sent. Unfortunately, this document is completely fake. The Judge quoted is one Señor Juan Miguel Hernandez, no such judge exists. Although we are not experts, we would say the signatures don’t match the names. No court in Spain sends documentation in English; in fact nationally, court documents follow the same procedure and are not in letter form. Below is an example:
This is a far cry from the document which has been sent to our enquirer. To compare you may view a copy here.
As may be observed, the language on the original is entirely Spanish, as you would expect from a Spanish court, the fake is in English. The date of the supposed court order is 28th August 2020, so why has it has taken 6 months to contact our enquirer?
One of our questions would be where is all this money coming from? Spain, like many countries is not in the habit of handing out state funds to settle criminal court cases. Apart from Ramirez & Ramirez, Litigation Services is also mentioned. Now we know Litigation Services of old, see our article. Litigation Services still exist; surely if they were found guilty they would be put out of business, but not so. Call us cynical but it wouldn’t come as a big shock if Litigation Service were behind this scam.
Conclusion
To the untrained eye this is a good one, a lot more effort has been expended to add realism and evidence as to why this court case actually happened, but it didn’t! How is it that any individual may be awarded monies by a court for a case they have never heard of? Even more to the point, would it not be reasonable for a court to have some sort of communication with the plaintiff before the hearing. Courts work on evidence and in this case and others we have investigated the first the “plaintiff” knows is when they have been awarded money. Believe us when we say, courts just don’t work that way.
Albeit sophisticated, this is a scam nevertheless so stay well clear. There never has been, or will be any settlement as described by our article. One thing is for certain, you will never be a winner because as sure as God made little apples the only loser will not be the defendant, it will be you.
For more information regarding this article or assistance in any other timeshare related issues please contact the TCA on 01908 881058 or email: info@TimeshareConsumerAssociation.org.uk