Dilip Kuner
A PENSIONER who claimed she had been held up at knifepoint in broad daylight has been arrested after police realised it was the eighth time she had complained of similar crimes.
The 79-year-old told Policia Nacional that she had been robbed of her purse by two people.
But officers’ suspicions were raised when their investigations failed to find any witnesses despite the ‘offence’ happening at 6.30pm on a busy shopping street.
They also wondered why no passers-by had come to the aid of an elderly woman with mobility problems.
On checking through their records, they found that this was the eighth time she had reported a similar incident – and each statement she had given was suspiciously alike.
All of the ‘robberies’ were in public streets in which one or more people threatened her with bladed weapons or assaulted her to steal her belongings.
Police summoned the ‘victim’ back to the station, where she admitted she had made the incident up to make a claim on her insurance.
She has been charged with simulating a crime.
This is not the first fake report that has been in the news recently.
Last month a fraudster who made a bogus claim about having his wallet stolen changed his story when he realised he might miss out on an insurance claim, and was promptly nicked by disbelieving cops.
The 64-year-old man from Alicante had filed a complaint saying his wallet had been stolen in a shopping centre by a woman.
But 10 days later he returned to the police station to say he had just remembered she had in fact followed him home and attacked him to get the wallet. This would have made it a crime of violence and enabled him to claim on his insurance.
The Policia Nacional quickly deduced that the ‘victim’ was trying to scam his insurance company. The man was arrested for reporting a bogus crime and for attempted fraud.
READ MORE:
- Police on Spain’s Costa Blanca say rising bogus crime reports are conning banks and insurance companies out of money
- Valencia records fastest-growing crime rate of Spain’s major cities
- Italian mafia crime boss and two henchmen arrested in Valencia area of Spain
