Yet again we find a real firm of lawyers whose identity has been stolen by scammers. Sagarra i Montalvo are based in Barcelona and only have one office but strangely the letter received by the potential victim shows an office in Tenerife, no surprises there. As another point of note, as you will see above there is the statement “Solutions non Spanish residents can trust” so we find it odd that the official website for the real law firm has the language choice of Catalan or Castellano but no English. If dealing with English speakers you would have thought that an English version of the site would be available, sadly this is not the case.
On perusing the site we can establish that this law firm are specialist in self employed and corporate matters with not a sight of either timeshare or criminal cases.
Digging deeper
Unlike previous scams we have seen, the fake court document makes no reference to who the defendant is, neither does the covering letter. No court would issue documents without full information of the case. The email received came from @spainmail.com which is open source and similar to all other free email platforms such as Gmail or hotmail. On checking, the real email address for this firm, as you would expect, this includes their domain name; @gestiobcn.com.
On checking the phone number quoted by the scammer, again this does not tie up with the number on the official website. The address quoted by the scammers is Calle Corales 329 Santa Cruz Tenerife which is fake because as stated above the real firm doesn’t have an office in Tenerife.
The Scam
Normally these types of scam revolve around failed holiday clubs such as Eze group or Club Class, none of which incidentally have had Spanish prosecution or court cases, this one is different. Neither the covering letter or fake court document state who the case is against, that cannot be correct for a start. The covering letter is full of lies regarding the effect that Brexit has had on court claims in Spain. We will nip that in the bud straight away as Brexit has had no effect at all.
So what’s the offer on the table, below is an extract from the covering letter:
There is also a magnanimous offer contained in the letter:
From this, the fake law firm are only charging €380 for their service, rubbish; no lawyer would get out of bed for that sum. So where is the sting in the tail?
Later in the letter is once again a reference to Brexit and although no sum is involved there is mention of a fee:
If this scam runs to plan, this “small” fee will just be the beginning of a string of spurious requests for money. Working on the greed factor of a payout of €11,221 even if the victim pays €3,000 in fees then it’s still a profitable result, but it won’t be. No matter how little or how much is paid there will be no €11,221 pot of gold at the end of this scammers rainbow.
TCA comment
This is basically the same scam that has been going on for years, scammers hiding behind real law firms. From our investigations this one is slightly different in as much as there is no actual mention of what the supposed award is for or who the court case was against, no doubt this was revealed in the original cold call. We surmise that the fact there is no reference to the case in either the covering letter or fake court document is because all the documentation is a cut and paste exercise with only the need to change the name and address of the potential victim, we even believe that the sum awarded will be the same no matter what the case.
Naturally TCA have been in contact with the real firm and sent them redacted copies of the documentation we have in our possession, hopefully they will investigate further.
If you are contacted out of the blue by a supposed Spanish law firm saying you have been awarded a sum from a court case that you have had no previous knowledge of then run for the hills. We can state without fear of contradiction that there never has been, or will be, such court cases in Spain or anywhere else for that matter.
We contacted leading Spanish timeshare law firm M1 Legal, apart from confirming that the court document was indeed a fake. They also informed us that in all Spanish court cases when dealing with a non resident client the law firm would require a notarised and apostilled power of attorney in order to represent a client in court, needless to say no such document was ever requested.
Finally, below we have downloadable redacted documents so be warned, if you receive such nonsense don’t whatever you do fall for it as the only winner will be the scammer.
Letter
Court Document
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