A user accesses the Tinder network.NurPhoto (NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Everything was dark, not even the silhouettes could be seen in this room without an iota of light. The woman and man had bonded over the Tinder network after months of talking. He had requested that the meeting be held in total blackness to ensure “sensual contact for sense-elevating and letting go.” But there was a moment when she felt a little strange. He pocketed his phone’s flashlight, shone it briefly on his face and could see that it wasn’t the same as the profile he’d been chatting with for the past few months. He, jealous of her face affected by a skin disease and aware that he had been discovered, became nervous and sexually assaulted her. When she was able to walk, the woman went to the National Police to file a complaint. Operation Scales had begun.
That first statement came last February, and cops sensed he wasn’t the only one. As is so often the case, the researchers at the Family and Women’s Care Unit (Ufam) were faced with a puzzle. An aggressor without a name, with a false profile on networks and also without a face, apart from the thousandths of a second that this woman was able to enlighten him and which were not enough to identify him. The thread used to pull it was very fine, but gradually it grew thicker until they found it.
Appointments at their homes or hotels
In his profile, he used photos he found online of boys who police sources said were “neither very handsome nor very ugly,” leading victims to believe he was talking to someone real. “He created a double life for himself, which he maintained for months until he gained the women’s full trust,” these sources point out. It was after a long time when the proposal came up. A date in the dark to heighten the senses, at their house. Sometimes, when the victims didn’t want the meeting to take place at their home, he would arrange to rent a hotel room and pay the bill. It was always much higher than the actual price of the stay.
It was immensely difficult to find the attacker. The man, a 43-year-old Spaniard, has no known address and has hopped from job to job throughout his life. On some occasions he would use violence against his victims, on other occasions he would seize the moment when they went to the bathroom or were absent-minded to steal money or other valuables. After the meeting, he blocked them on all social networks so they could no longer find him.
Their arrest wasn’t the end of the case, but it turned out they were just the tip of the iceberg. Agents handcuffed him the day he left for a new job in Móstoles, one of those he linked to make ends meet. In his possession he had two terminals with more than 400 blocked numbers. The Ufam investigators then began the laborious process of contacting all those affected to find out whether there were other victims.
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Police concluded that there are at least 10 women who were sexually abused by this man, who posed as someone else and hid his face to avoid identification and to allow no one to see the marks on his face caused by the disease noticed. All told an almost identical story, with the same formulas and the same ironclad conditions for the meeting to take place.
Other incriminating elements came to light in the discussions, such as the fact that the condom was sometimes removed in the middle of intercourse, which is also an assault. Some of the women who showed up in those 400 contacts chose not to call, others told agents they had telephone contact, but that meeting never took place. After the arrest, the man is released pending trial.
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