Motoring monkey-business in Madrid

NATIONAL POLICE have detained two men at Barajas-Adolfo Suarez airport in Madrid, who managed to pocket more than €2 million via a fraudulent luxury car business.

After obtaining the confidence of a car showroom in Germany, the dodgy dealers blagged 37 high-end vehicles which were subsequently shipped to the Spanish capital before being sold in Madrid, Malaga, Alicante, Badajoz, A Coruña, and Ibiza.

Unfortunately for the wretched German sales team, they never received a penny for the extravagant motors, although the Spanish investigation resulted in them being recovered and returned.

Detectives soon sussed out who was responsible for the skulduggery, identifying two businessmen who resided outside the country, with cash from the duplicitous car sales being laundered through bogus companies set up by the pair.

They were detained at Madrid’s principal airport after they arrived on a flight from Qatar and will now face an official trial.

The criminal stylings employed by the crooks are known as the ‘Nazarene scam’, a modus operandi involving the creation of a ficticious business in order to deliver sales orders to rich clients.

Transactions, typically involving large quantities of money, are then carried out but firms supplying the fraudsters never receive their part of the profits, while the cheating malefactors walk away with the lot as their phoney enterprise is quickly shut down once the money is in.