They dismantle scams worth 17 million pesos in the sale of Cristal beer and food in Cuba

A police operation in the city of Santa Clara, in Villa Clara, intervened before the denunciation of two millionaire scams which in one case involved food products such as condensed milk and imported cookies (valued at more than two million pesos) and another 22 parts of beer glass (valued at more than 15 million pesos).

Lieutenant Colonel Héctor de la Fe Freire, head of the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) in the province, detailed in a report on the official radio station CMHW that in one of the cases it all started with the use of social networks to purchase merchandise from self-employed workers residing in the province of Sancti Spíritus.

After the agreement of a voluminous and attractive purchase consisting of 50 boxes of condensed milk and 21 boxes of imported cookies, all valued at 2,314,080 CUP, The victims of the scam were directed to a home in the Condado neighborhood, in Santa Clara, to deliver the merchandise.

They initially received a partial payment, with the promise that the rest of the money was supposedly in another home nearby.

“That first payment had 1,000 CUP bills visible, but almost all of them were 1 peso bills”, explained the researcher.

Once the sellers left the place - and the merchandise - to receive full payment at another nearby house, The products were quickly extracted from the first home by a group that disappeared extremely quickly using animal-drawn vehicles.

Upon arriving at the place where the rest of the payment was supposed to be made, the scammer also disappeared. When the self-employed person returned to the first home to look for his merchandise, there was no longer a trace of the products, according to the head of the MININT in Villa Clara.

However, the source revealed that during the investigation some of the merchandise was eventually recovered.

For that fact Six Villa Clara residents between 21 and 47 years old are accused of the crime of fraud.

Those arrested include the person responsible for organizing the sale using social networks (who had a criminal record), the owner of the home where the merchandise was left, and the so-called “dockworkers,” in charge of moving it around and marketing it at full speed.

In a second operation, The police recovered almost the entire shipment of Cristal beer, valued at more than 15 million Cuban pesos (CUP), which was defrauded following the same mode of operation.

“There were more than twenty pairs of Cristal beer from the west of the country and a sale was made here in the municipality of Santa Clara. Once the person who owns the merchandise arrives in Santa Clara, he goes to the home of the person who finally ended up scamming him,” the officer explained.

According to Héctor de la Fe Freire's account, the scammer gave part of the money to the seller, agreeing to give him the rest at a later date. However, he never returned.

A minimal part of the beers were sold on the black market for 215 pesos, a price lower than the price at which the sale had been agreed upon, which was 225 per can. However, the senior MININT official in Villa Clara indicated that most of the merchandise was recovered.

Héctor de la Fe Freire took the opportunity to reiterate the importance of verifying the identity of buyers and sellers who are contacted through social networks, and of ensuring that the places where the transactions will be carried out have the conditions necessary to avoid surprises.