3 Aug, 2020 @ 17:39
1 min read

Scammers used moonshine to make fake sterilising gels for hospitals in Spain

Still Fake Gel

TWO people have been arrested for selling sterilising hydro-alcohol gels they made out of moonshine.

They supplied hospitals and health centres who used the useless gels in their fight against coronavirus.

It was only when staff complained about the distinctive whiff of ‘aguardiente’ coming from the fake sterilising gel that it was realised something was up.

Fake Gel
FAKE: Gels were useless

Tests showed the products contained at most 25% alcohol instead of the minimum 70% needed to be effective.

Guardia Civil in A Coruña launched an investigation, which found the distribution company did not have the correct licences.

Further investigation revealed that the two men arrested were in fact making the gel themselves in a poultry shed.

The two posed as experienced chemists and initially managed to get away with the scam because of the urgent need for sterilising products.

Still Fake Gel
HOME MADE: Scammers set up a still in a poultry shed

Guardia Civil found 400 litres of the false hydro-alcoholic gel already packaged when they raided the shed. Officers also managed to track down and confiscate 6,400 litres of the product which had already been distributed to hospitals and medical centres throughout Spain.

Dilip Kuner

Dilip Kuner is a NCTJ-trained journalist whose first job was on the Folkestone Herald as a trainee in 1988.
He worked up the ladder to be chief reporter and sub editor on the Hastings Observer and later news editor on the Bridlington Free Press.
At the time of the first Gulf War he started working for the Sunday Mirror, covering news stories as diverse as Mick Jagger’s wedding to Jerry Hall (a scoop gleaned at the bar at Heathrow Airport) to massive rent rises at the ‘feudal village’ of Princess Diana’s childhood home of Althorp Park.
In 1994 he decided to move to Spain with his girlfriend (now wife) and brought up three children here.
He initially worked in restaurants with his father, before rejoining the media world in 2013, working in the local press before becoming a copywriter for international firms including Accenture, as well as within a well-known local marketing agency.
He joined the Olive Press as a self-employed journalist during the pandemic lock-down, becoming news editor a few months later.
Since then he has overseen the news desk and production of all six print editions of the Olive Press and had stories published in UK national newspapers and appeared on Sky News.

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