Digital platforms form the initial scenario to hunt or fish the victims. Persons interested in conducting informal operations of buying and selling freely convertible currency and who underestimate the danger of illegality and crime become potential targets of robberies with violence and fraud in physical space while engaging in illegal transactions , classified offenses such as currency trading and other conduct that encourages financial speculation.
The perpetrators offer supposedly good prices on Facebook and other platforms as bait for the sale of currencies; They provide phone numbers of people who appear friendly when answering the calls, supposedly correct, with impeccable vocabulary and they happily agree on the address, day and exact time they need to go to “change”. Sometimes they even use the victim’s own home as the scene of the robbery.
They are the link between the virtual deception and the real hit. With a lot of cold-bloodedness, they take care of meeting things and making the victim believe that they have a lot ahead of them that cannot escape them. They are never identified by their real names, nor do they give any indication of their future whereabouts. They are very active people in digital social networks, contacting many interested parties in the above informal and illegal transactions, which, given the lack of legal offers due to the policy of economic suffocation, allows them to have numerous candidates at the same time financial blockade and the more than 240 Measures taken by the United States government to make the Cuban people uncomfortable.
The crime scene is usually a remote place with little movement of people and vehicles; to very well rehearsed hours; outside the communities where the victims reside; previously chosen by criminals. Confronted and resolved cases confirm the use of hallways, apartment buildings, apartments (by mutual consent with complicit or naive residents) or the victim’s home.
Bearers of large sums of national currency to buy the alleged dollars promised to them on the networks or in coordinated phone calls, They are attacked and intercepted by individuals who threaten them with physical violence and in some cases with white guns or fire, even physically attacking them and stealing all the money they were carrying in order to carry out the fake “change”.
The processes carried out by the organs of the Criminal Investigation System of the Ministry of Interior (the Technical Investigations, the Criminal Police and the National Revolutionary Police) have been able to establish and neutralize criminal chains dedicated to these acts, which include individuals who made the proposal on the Internet always with a false profile and with easy communication (the hunter of victims); the person who is well-dressed, well-mannered, in a “friendly” tone, showing their face and leading you to the crime scene (the driver to the crime scene), and the group of attackers, the number of which varies depending on the criminal chain.
The latter are people who have usually committed other crimes, have poor social behavior and are usually very violent in order to steal the money, which they then divide among themselves according to the degree of involvement in the preparations and at the time of the bang.
The coordinated and resolute action of the Interior Ministry bodies made it possible to arrest more than 120 people involved in this type of crime in the capital last yearwhile it neutralized 17 cases during the planning process, making it possible to alert potential victims and arrest those who planned the crime. 12 criminal chains with 4 to 12 members were broken up.
Although there was no loss of life as a result of these events, Yes, people have been seriously injured by the extreme violence of these criminals.
In 2022, in the processing of these crimes, 126 were arrested and charged, and as part of the criminal justice measures, 67 accused were placed in temporary prisons and admitted. Persons accused of such offenses may be punished with severe imprisonment under our applicable Penal Code.
The operational and confrontational response to these cases required the personal ingenuity of officers and staff of various MININT bodies in close liaison with the populace, as well as the determined use of new technologies to detect, prevent or counter the criminals whose dangerous criminal acts threaten the Security of citizens and internal order, sacred achievements of the revolution, which we will never renounce, and to preserve them the forces of the ministerial system fight day and night, which does not allow for impunity.
Again, not only vigilance and the determined participation of the population in the conflict and the timely denunciation of these events are required, but also increase risk perception in the face of illegal offers from scammers and thugs who take advantage of people’s objective needs and the possibilities of digital social networks to carry out criminal acts that are incompatible with the values and principles of our society.
(taken from the ministry)
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