Following our article in January relating to AB Abogados. To our delight the scammers tried it on again with a diligent reader of this site, lucky for us the scam went further than the evidence we had in our possession at the time of writing the previous article.
Although we knew 100% that this was a scam, there was no request for money, rather strange? With the latest information to hand, that all changed. Once again the fake court document was sent citing the same companies mentioned in our last article but this time things progressed. Apparently when compensation is awarded by a Spanish court there is tax payable, in this case there was a request for €6,154.47. The first point we need to get out of the way straight away is tax, on checking with a bona fide law company, M1 Legal who are specialists in timeshare claims, we established that there is no tax payable on court awards in Spain.
Our reader stated categorically the he would not be willing to pay any tax, guess what? After a meeting with the “partners” AB Abogados said they would kindly pay the tax and deduct it from his settlement as may be confirmed here:
“Lamentably there is usually very little we can do however, we as a firm occasionally carry out Pro Bono work. We feel that there is a lot of money at stake for you and your family and as a gesture of goodwill you have been made eligible for this arrangement. We are pleased to inform you that payment of your Tax liability in the amount of 6,154.47 Euros will be made directly to the Forumulario tax office by our Firm on the last Friday of February.
We shall of course, now add this amount to our final 20% commission once you have received compensation.”
In the same letter the scammers go to great lengths to convince our reader that they are a really legitimate law firm. Apparently they have professional indemnity insurance of up to €60,000 to protect their clients, this is issued by Tesoro Abogados Comercios Reintegro Contrato, slight problem here, no such organisation exists.
As we mentioned in the previous article, we found it hard to understand that a lawyer with a single office in Barcelona would be a member of organisations in the Canary Islands:
More on that later. What really grabbed our interest are various other documents that have been sent which we will look at now.
The Documents
Our enquirer was sent a transfer request which was for payment of the “tax”. The transfer was to be made to a named individual being Adan Alvarez Alvaro, odd because tax payable in Spain would normally be paid direct to the Agencia Tributaria so why isn’t the transfer direct to the tax authority? The address shown on the transfer request is indeed the Tribunal Superior de Justicia de Catalunya Atención Al Ciudadano, interesting the last part of the address translated means “Citizen Service” so are we to assume that the Supreme Court in Spain is going to take care of paying the tax for claimants as part of their “citizen service”? By the way, a tax that doesn’t exist! We doubt that very much.
Although the address of the account holder shown is real, this is where it gets interesting. For some time we have believed that these scammers are in Tenerife, remember we mentioned the Canary Islands above; well a hunch gave us the evidence to prove this. On checking the IBAN number on the transfer request being ES12 2100 7016 3202 0010 0530, here is what we found:
As the transfer request states, the account is certainly with Caixa Bank but note, the branch address is in Playa de las Americas which the last time we looked was fairly and squarely in Tenerife. So why would a law firm in Barcelona, a court in Barcelona and a supposed official of the court have a bank account in Tenerife? We will leave you to ponder that one.
Now, to add a further layer of credibility to the scam, our reader was sent a copy of a cheque for the sum of €29,307, see below:
Once again our friend the IBAN number tells all. Using the same search as above, we found the following:
El dígito de verificación del número de cuenta no es correcto
IBAN El dígito de control no es correcto
La estructura IBAN no es correcta
La longitud de IBAN no es correcta
Which translated says:
The check digit of the account number is not correct
IBAN The check digit is not correct
The IBAN structure is not correct
IBAN length is not correct
The “Oficina” code quoted reveals the following:
Entity: Bankia – Caja Madrid
Office code: 9223
Office type: Urban agency
Address: S. Antoni Claret, 139
ZIP Code: 08000
Area: Barcelona
Although in Barcelona, the bank is not La Caixa but Bankia
The Final part of the scam
Here we at a loss, although we have our suspicions. Our reader wouldn’t pay the tax so that part of the scam failed but perhaps he might pay a much lesser sum for some spurious fake form such as a European transfer authorisation form which we all know after Brexit is required, is it hell as like, no such form exists. As far as the victim is concerned, the kind lawyers are stumping up the tax so maybe paying ,say €2,600, for a nonexistent form still means he is quids in, after all, taking the lawyers fee, the tax and the nonexistent form fee he could still walk away with over €14,000, except he won’t. As we have stated numerous times, there has been no court case and there never will be, so whatever monies paid will be lost.
Conclusion
We have to take off our hat to these fraudsters they have gone to extraordinary lengths to pull this one off. Plan A didn’t work but they already have a plan B to cover that eventuality, though exactly what plan B is we are uncertain as this particular potential victim bailed out before it panned out.
Suffice to say to the untrained eye this one is packed with all the right ingredients to take considerable sums from unsuspecting victims, please don’t let it be you.
Apart from all the letters and documents and the evidence above, all the lawyers and staff names don’t exist, virtually nobody nowadays is not on some form of social media and needless to say none of these names show up. The usual fake email addresses also abound such as ab.abogados@consultant.com. @consultant is a service similar to hotmail or Gmail.
We have some pointed questions to raise in relation to bank transfers in Spain. It appears that the only detail that needs to be correct is the IBAN number. The transfer request shows the address of the account holder as the Supreme Court in Barcelona, well that’s obviously a lie. The address of the bank is shown as CL Pintor Sorolla 2-4, 46002, Valencia, this we know to be false as the address of the bank is in Tenerife. Given that the transferor has to complete these obviously fake details, surely transferring banks and receiving banks should have greater checks and balances in place to protect against potential fraud, it would appear not.
Luckily for our reader he saved himself €6,154 (£5,179) by reading our original article. Of late our latest mantra has been “hindsight is a wonderful thing but foresight is far more powerful”. Our reader had the foresight to do his research before he found himself the victim of this well executed fraud. Please do your own research and if you are in any doubt simply contact us.
Helping people avoid becoming a victim is what all of us at TCA strive for and when we have reports that our work has stopped another fraud dead in its tracks this makes our efforts all the more worthwhile.
Many thanks to our astute reader for assisting us to investigate and report further on this fraud.
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