John Culatto
A FORMER Gibraltar police officer and a woman who allegedly swindled £230,000 from two UK citizens via online payments faced trial Friday.
Police arrested Darren Gonzalez, 28, and Kelly Anne Cooper, 23, both of Mid Harbour Estate, on Thursday after a ten month investigation.
Royal Gibraltar Police officers charged Gonzalez with 16 counts of Fraud by False Representation.
They also charged Cooper with one count of money laundering and another of acquisition of criminal property.
The alleged offences occurred between February 2020 and October 2022, police said in a statement.
The Economic Crime Unit had been investigating the alleged crime since the last payment in October last year.
After some time, they found that Cooper had received some online transfers into her bank account.
Police officers bailed the pair out on Thursday evening until the following morning.
Company fraud
It followed the arrests of two Brits who allegedly siphoned off £43,900 from a company between August 2022 and April 2023.
Police officers arrested Wendy Simpson, 66, for making the 67 transfers out of her employer’s account.
While she paid 54 of those transfers to her own bank account in the UK, she made 13 of them to her partner’s account.
Once the Economic Crime Unit discovered this fact, they arrested her partner Peter West, 67, whose bank account is in Gibraltar.
Prosecutors charged Simpson with various fraud, false accounting and money laundering charges.
They charged West acquiring criminal property and unauthorised use of a computer.
At the Magistrates Court Monday, they were denied bail and jailed until their trial on August 1.
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