Madrid/Fraudulently obtaining Spanish nationality for Cubans is confirmed as a very lucrative business. In the most recent case Of those detected by the National Police, the scammer also offered a fake driving license, after passing a fictitious practical test, for 4,000 euros.
This is how this 57-year-old man, of Spanish nationality, was arrested last week in Manises (Valencia). The investigation began in April, when one of the victims went to the police station to file a complaint for fraud in the procedures for obtaining a driving license.
The agents identified the perpetrator and discovered that he had also carried out the same scam on Cubans, offering to obtain their nationality by proving with false documentation that the interested parties were children or grandchildren of Spaniards, thus opening the way to the application provided for in the Law of Democratic Memory.
The investigation began in April, when one of the victims went to the police station to file a complaint for fraud in the procedures for obtaining the driving license.
The alleged fraudster had a vehicle that he used for driving practice and which he kept at his home, where he was arrested when he tried to leave the garage at high speed last June. The police had fitted him with a tracking device which facilitated his arrest.
Inside the car, the suspect was carrying a backpack containing a Spanish passport of a deceased person, a Cuban passport, documentation from Spanish and Cuban civil registries, stamps from public bodies, a laptop and a hard drive, according to a statement from the National Police.
In a subsequent search of his home, a multitude of other documents of living Cubans and dead Spaniards were found, as well as birth and death certificates, another computer and USB drives, a photocopier, a printer, a paper shredder, a packaging machine and a laminator, more than 50 Cuban passports and 1,750 euros in cash and various stamps from public bodies, among other items, according to a statement from the National Police.
He also had a storage room containing five suitcases and boxes with documents similar to those mentioned above, which he used to carry out the fraud. The detainee, who already had a criminal record for similar crimes, was brought before the judge accused of belonging to a criminal group, falsification of documents and fraud. For the moment, he is on provisional release with precautionary measures, including a ban on leaving the country.
At the moment, he is on provisional release with precautionary measures, including a ban on leaving the national territory.
At the end of Maythe Spanish National Police also dismantled a similar type of network, in this case dedicated to falsifying documents to manage the residency of Cubans in Spain. The organization was made up of four members, two men and two women, of Cuban and Italian origin who charged between 1,000 and 3,000 euros for operations of this type that were discovered by the Administration itself, which detected irregularities originating from the Government Subdelegation in Valencia, where this group also operated.
By the end of 2022 another network was dismantledwhich operated in Catalonia, offering regularisation to Cubans with stolen documents. Here too, it was the police who noticed the deception, noting a sharp increase in applications for residence permits based on family ties from Cuban citizens, supposedly children of Spaniards in Catalonia.
