Officers from the National Police have arrested a 47-year-old Spanish man for the crimes of fraud and documentary falsification, for spending the loyalty points accrued at a DIY store which didn’t belong to him, spending 689.64 euro from the victim’s account in up to four different purchases, in addition to trying another purchase worth 212.04 euro.
The facts were brought to the attention of the National Police by a client of a large DIY, construction and decoration materials store, who detected that the accumulated balance from previous purchases had decreased considerably in a partner account, with purchases made by another person who had access to the account.
The victim had accumulated a substantial amount of points in the account, which materialised as money for future purchases, after having acquired materials for a reform carried out, thus accumulating a 3% refund corresponding to each purchase made.
However, when checking the account, the victim discovered that, in addition to her husband and herself, there was a third person as authorised in her customer account, whom she was completely unaware of, seeing her points account depleted by nearly seven hundred euro, which she also brought to the attention of the security department of the multinational chain.
For this reason, the Investigation Group II of the North Alicante Police Station began an investigation in this regard. The agents, after contacting the establishment where the purchases were made, were informed that this same man had tried to make another purchase worth more than two hundred euro, however, the security service suspected that he could be fraudulently using the account of another person’s points and prevented the sale, alerting the National Police of it, through which it was possible to fully identify the alleged offender.
Thus, after other investigative efforts, the agents managed to establish the alleged authorship of this man in the facts, which is why they arrested him as the alleged perpetrator of a crime of fraud and documentary falsification.
Apparently, the arrested man would have somehow manipulated the customer database to add himself as authorised in the victim’s partner account without her consent and thus be able to make purchases with the balance that appears in the account, after exchanging the points for money.
The investigation remains open as it is unknown to date if there could be more victims affected by this same type of events.
The detainee was released after giving a statement at the police station, waiting to be summoned to appear in court.
