- An unidentified Spaniard woman faked her kidnapping to gain ransom money for bingo.
- The woman was requesting $7,000 to be set free.
BARCELONA – In what was a sick, yet creative scheme, an unidentified middle-aged Spaniard woman is being charged with faking her kidnapping to receive a ransom to play bingo.
The husband of the woman was being treated in a Barcelona hospital before being alerted about his wife’s abduction and quickly sprang into action by contacting local authorities.
“We were alerted by the husband of the alleged victim who contacted officers based in Badalona near Barcelona that he had received several mobile phone messages in which his wife told him she had been kidnapped and advised him on how to act—Specialists from a kidnap and extortion unit were called in to take charge of the investigation and were able to discover the woman had not been abducted and had been able to access part of the money her partner had paid as a ransom,”said a Mossos d’Esquadra spokesperson.
After obtaining the $7,000 bingo money ransom to be set free, the woman was caught on surveillance withdrawing the funds from a bank outside of Barcelona in Badalona.
She was then traced to a casino in the area where she was caught and arrested while playing bingo.
Super Bowl Abduction Hoax
The “fake kidnapping” scheme is more common in the gambling world than some might think. In 2019 for Super Bowl 53, Robert Brandel, a New York native, organized Super Bowl betting squares and added fake names to that pool.
All in all, he was left owing $50,000 before faking his own kidnapping. Brandel was caught tied up in the back of a truck. The giveaway about the situation being a hoax was that he was clean-shaven after claiming he had been stuck for three days.