Bank employee arrested in Gandia for defrauding elderly and vulnerable customer of €25,000
The Guardia Civil arrested a 29-year-old bank employee in Gandia accused of withdrawing €25,000 from the account of an elderly customer who lived alone.
Bank employee arrested in Gandia accused of defrauding elderly customer of €25,000
The Guardia Civil has arrested a 29-year-old bank employee in Gandia accused of allegedly withdrawing €25,000 from the account of an elderly customer, according to cadenaser.com.
The investigation began on 2 March, following a report from the victim, an elderly woman who has lived alone since the death of her husband and who has no family in Spain. The affected party stated that unauthorised withdrawals had been made from her account between 16 January and 6 June 2026, using a bank card issued in her name.
The woman had visited the branch on several occasions to request the cancellation of the card, and in all cases was attended to by the same employee. In one of those encounters, the employee asked her to change the PIN for access to the banking application in his presence and verified that with this new code he could access the account from his own mobile phone. Upon returning to her home, the customer tried to log into the application and found that the PIN was no longer the one she had set.
The investigators gathered information from the banking entity and determined that the withdrawals had been made at an automated teller machine in Gandia. Analysis of images from security cameras made it possible to identify the person responsible for the transactions: the same employee who had attended to the complainant at the office.
The Guardia Civil contends that the detainee would have taken advantage of his position as an employee of the entity to access the victim's details and request a card in her name—physical or virtual—without her knowledge, whilst having retained access to the PIN and failed to proceed with cancelling the card despite the customer's repeated requests.
The investigators further note that the alleged perpetrator would have chosen the victim because of her particular vulnerability: she is an elderly woman, a foreigner, who lives alone in Spain and has no family support network.
The investigation was carried out by officers from the Investigation Area of the Principal Station in Oliva. The detainee has been placed at the disposal of the judicial authorities as the alleged perpetrator of a continuing fraud offence. The proceedings were sent to the Civil and Investigative Division of the Gandia Court Number 3.
Source: Google News ES — Crime (es)