- The 52-year-old arrested man was released with charges after going to court.
The Mossos d’Esquadra reported this Thursday that they have arrested a 52-year-old man as the alleged perpetrator of the simulation of his own kidnapping.
The events date back to the afternoon of March 20, when the mother of the arrested man received a series of messages on her mobile alerting her that her son was kidnapped and demanding payment of 2,500 euros to release him. If she did not pay, the kidnappers threatened that the immediate consequence would be to injure her.
Concerned about the messages she had received, hours later the mother went to the Sant Cugat del Vallès police station to file the corresponding complaint.
The Central Kidnapping and Extortion Unit of the Criminal Investigation Division took charge of the case after initial inquiries were carried out by investigative agents from the Rubí police station.
From the outset, all credibility was given to the kidnapping, and the usual resources in these cases were activated with the aim of locating and releasing the person allegedly kidnapped.
In the course of the police inquiries, on the afternoon of March 21, the investigators had access to information according to which he was in the center of Sabadell and had been seen walking down the street.
Once the agents confirmed that it was the same person and that he had not been deprived of liberty, they approached to identify him and to verify if the reported event had occurred at some point.
Faced with the inability to sustain a story that the evidence refuted, he admitted to the agents that he had invented the kidnapping and that he himself had sent the messages to his mother to extort her, in order to get money to pay some personal debts that he had contracted.
The Mossos arrested him for the alleged simulation of the kidnapping and for a crime of threats conditioned for profit towards the complainant, to whom the arrested man had imposed the ransom payment by threatening his own life.
The detainee was released with charges after going to court.
The Mossos have recalled that simulating crimes or filing false complaints for events that have not happened are actions typified by the Penal Code and, therefore, the perpetrators can be investigated or arrested, depending on the case.