14ymedio, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 2 May 2017 — Three Cubans resident in Gran Canaria (Canary Islands) have been charged by the Prosecutor’s Office of Las Palmas with an attempted felony offense, and another of falsification of a commercial document, for having passed themselves off as members of the technical service teams of the main brands of appliances and making fraudulent repairs, as reported in the local press this Tuesday.
According to the Provincial Prosecutor’s office, the three suspects worked through the web serviciotecnicosat.com (already temporarily closed by the Court), where they managed to place themselves among the first positions on search engines like Google to capture “an indeterminate plurality of potential clients.”
At first, the alleged scams carried out by Yusmil G.F., Juan D.N. and Jorge Eric P.B. went unnoticed as the complaints against them were interposed in judicial administrations of different regions which, in addition, demanded small amounts of money.
However, the fraudulent practices were uncovered in February 2014 when a woman contacted the AEG technical service office to complain about two faulty repairs by the defendants, who said they worked on behalf of the company, for which they charged 171 euros. AEG informed the woman that the alleged technicians were not part of their official service.
Many of these repairs, carried out in the name of the “most prestigious” brands, according to the Office of the Attorney General, were made with spare parts that were not originals from the manufacturers and invoices were issued in the name of non-existent companies, yielding an average of 400 euros for each repair.
The prosecution has requested three years of imprisonment for Yusmil G.F., two and a half years for Juan Antonio D.N. and two years and three months for Jorge Eric P.B. It also is asking that the accused be fined amounts up to 6,500 euros and be barred from performing repair or assistance services for a maximum of five years.
