They arrived at a spa in Mar del Plata and ordered
alcoholic beverages everywhere
.
In total, they spent close to
a million pesos
.
When it was time to pay, one of the eight young people - mostly tourists - took out his cell phone and paid with
Mercado Pago
.
However, the two transfers made never reached their destination.
The reason?
He had used
a fake version
that visually emulates the original application.
They all ended up arrested for fraud
.
The incident occurred this Wednesday at the
"Jano's Beach"
inn , in the Punta Mogotes area.
Six boys and two girls between
20 and 24 years old -
one a resident of Mar del Plata and the rest from Buenos Aires - arrived at the spa located at Avenida de los Trabajadores at 4,700 and consumed drinks for an amount of almost a million pesos.
They stayed all day
and around 10pm they came to pay.
The group tried to settle the account with the cell phone of one of its members through two alleged transfers,
one of 530,000 and another of 265,000.
None reached their destination.
Those in charge of the inn, alerted by the situation,
called 911
.
Agents from the 5th police station.
They showed up at the location, 500 meters from the Punta Mogotes Lighthouse.
The young people
were identified
by the police as Francisco Caballero Vargas (23) - who was the one who carried out the operation with his cell phone -, Santiago Villar (23), Nicolás Bruno Ariel (22), Luciano Bavaro (20), Martín Osvaldo Ovejero ( 24), Guido Navarro (22), Solana Villalba (23) and Abril Rey (22).
All were detained
in the framework of a "fraud" case, led by prosecutor David Bruna, of the Functional Instruction Unit 10, specialized in Economic Crimes.
All the young people were arrested for "fraud."
Photo: The Capital Mar del Plata
One of the accused is from La Plata, two from Garín, two others from the city of Buenos Aires, two from Escobar, and the remaining one from Mar del Plata.
As part of the investigation, the prosecutor ordered
the seizure of the cell phone
used to make the transfers to examine it and thus confirm whether the Mercado Pago application installed was apocryphal or not.
Additionally, he requested user reports from the company.
False Mercado Pago: how the scam works
Virtual scams do not stop and, with the advancement of technology, they are becoming more and more sophisticated and targeting more and more targets.
Alarms among Mercado Pago users began to sound in recent weeks and were aimed at merchants.
It is an application that visually emulates the original application.
How does it work?
Scammers take advantage of the moment to pay for a product in a store, they notify the seller that they are going to do it with Mercado Pago and
show them a screen similar
to that of the fintech, with the alias, CBU and correct amount.
As is often the case in this type of scam,
trust is the key to deception.
First of all, the merchant usually simply looks at the receipt.
Secondly, the possibility that the seller does not have access at the time to the MP account where the money was received, to observe whether the movement was made or not.
Thanks to this, criminals can trick the victim into believing that the transaction took place.
The false transfers made by the group of young people in Mar del Plata.
Photo: The Capital Mar del Plata
To prevent falling for this type of fraud, merchants are advised to verify in their application that payment has been completed before making any delivery of goods.
If made from accounts associated with the platform,
the money is credited instantly.
If it is an associated bank account, it may take a while.
Then there are specific details in the design that differentiate the fake application from the real one, as clarified by ESET Latin America.
It generally
has a logo that is not the original
: in some cases it is even outdated, larger or in a different color.
Even some words are different
, for example it mentions “Pay” instead of “Transfer”.
Finally, the seller must
check the data on the issued receipt
: CUIT, name of the person and bank entity.
Another fact to keep in mind is that this type of scam appears in cases where
payments are made through a transfer
, but not when it is made by scanning the QR code.
D.S.