Spain arrests 14 accused of defrauding families of missing migrants

MADRID: Spain’s Civil Guard has arrested 14 people for allegedly seeking to profit from the families of missing migrants from North Africa, promising them to find, identify and repatriate their bodies in return for money, it said on Wednesday.

The network lured victims by posting messages offering their services on social media, police said. The group allegedly spoke over several years with relatives in Morocco and Algeria whose family members were missing and feared to have died at sea while trying to reach the Spanish coast in small boats.

The Civil Guard said they offered to act as intermediaries with the Spanish authorities in exchange for money, using contacts with public officials in medical services to obtain photographs of migrants’ bodies in some cases.

Families were then asked for the personal details of the missing people on the false premise of carrying out a number of services including searches, filing complaints, arranging DNA samples for the identification bodies as well as translations, the Civil Guard said.

The suspected ringleader was a Moroccan man who used contacts in north Africa to assure families his help was genuine, police said.