Guardia Civil Shut Down Scammer in Rioja Trying to Profit Off Of The Coronavirus Crisis

THE Guardia Civil is currently investigating a 60-year-old Spanish native and resident in la Rioja for presumably committing a fraud and creating misleading advertisement to profit off coronavirus fears.  

Since the beginning of the State of Alarm, enforced as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the Guardia Civil has been keeping a close eye on online activities to detect any cyber-criminals and fraudsters, who use fears related to this crisis to take advantage of resident’s fears and profit from their insecurities.

This has led to the Guardia Civil identifying a particular seller who explicitly claimed his ventilator type products helped “Prevent the Covid-19 Coronavirus.” The description read “Potent disinfectant machine, by generating ozone, this equipment cleans entire rooms, creating a clean smell and disinfecting all surfaces at once, destroying bacteria, viruses, fungi etc.”  It also claimed to have laboratory tests to back up the validity of the machine which could clean up to 50 square metres.

The alleged perpetrator is now under investigation for taking advantage of a health crisis to attract customers and sell the 21 devices, at €130 a piece, that he had been storing up for years.

The Guardia Civil has set up a branch to receive information from citizens about cybercrimes which use the Covid-19 outbreak as a potential coercion. To contact this branch use the e-mail: ciberestafas@guardiacivil.org. These crimes can include scams, frauds, malicious attacks or even disinformation.