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Fancy-dress blood - an image presented to the German lady as part of the one-million-euro extortion.
Fake photos of 'dead' ex-husband used to blackmail Marbella woman

Fake photos of 'dead' ex-husband used to blackmail Marbella woman

Court sentences a lawyer, an ex-Guardia Civil officer, a photographer, an IT professional and a dentist over a disturbing fraud

JUAN CANO / ÁLVARO FRÍAS

Friday, 23 February 2018, 10:53

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The story reads like something out of an elaborate Holywood hoax, but the shock and fear of a German woman resident in Marbella was only too real when two Guardia Civil officers turned up on her doorstep with photos of her apparently dead ex-partner, saying they had proof that she was behind the killing. They demanded one million euros to keep quiet or she would face a 21-year prison sentence.

But the ex-husband wasn't dead and the set of photos, that included ones in a mortuary, were fake. A Malaga provincial court has recently sentenced a former Guardia Civil officer, a photographer, a lawyer, an IT worker and a dentist to 21 months each for organising the complex fraud that saw the woman convinced for a time and hand over as much as 60,000 euros in early 2014.

According to court documents, the incident began when the former Guardia Civil member and the photographer posed as the police officers, handing the woman the same t-shirt from the photographs, with a small Tarifa logo and fake blood on, as proof of the crime.

In turn two friends of the woman, the dentist and IT professional, were used to spy on her so she would feel she was being watched. However these two accomplices, in an attempt to gain control of the money the woman had started to hand over, then involved a lawyer to collect the money for the conspirators.

The woman's ex-partner, who was in the photographs, was not arrested and still hasn't been found.

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