A total of five Cubans, three men and two women, were arrested in the city of Holguín for scamming and robbing people who expressed interest in purchasing dollars through social media, according to the state media Cazador-Cazado.
The source stated that those involved used a Facebook profile called "Claudia Ramírez," from where they expressed their intention to buy dollars in different groups and provided a phone number for interested parties to contact them privately.
Then they arranged to meet in a secluded place and used violence or intimidation to rob the victims of their money.
The arrested individuals were Jorge Írsula Cardosa, Yunior Reyna, Adriana Arsuaga, Ariana Hernández Tamayo, and Noel Román.
The individuals were detained in a house in the Reparto Vista Alegre of the capital city "just as they were about to carry out such a misdeed," the source added, who did not provide further details on the circumstances that led the authorities to the alleged thieves, nor the number of potential victims of their actions.
One of the false dollar purchase offers showed interest in buying 3,000 dollars at 365 CUP, meaning that the scammers were willing to pay out 1,095,000 CUP to anyone who fell into the trap.
In the final section of the publication, the official profile did not miss the opportunity to discourage the purchase of foreign currency in the black market.
"Always remember that opting for legal practices to carry out transactions or financial changes, avoiding informal markets, and promptly reporting to the authorities regarding such events will contribute to preventing scams and other associated crimes from proliferating," they concluded.
In recent days, a woman who allegedly tried to scam some Cubans in Artemisa was detained by the people with whom she conducted the business, and they threatened not to let her go "until she returns the money."
"This woman went today to Alquízar, Artemisa province, to the house of some people, with two men in a yellow taxi to buy 2000 MLC, they made the transfer and they called from Havana saying that the money had not been credited to the card," denounced on Facebook the activist Diasniurka Salcedo Verdecia, who called on relatives or friends of the woman to return the money.
While sharing images of the woman, the activist added that the men accompanying her fled the scene. The complaint also stated that "the police are aware and say they will not get involved."
At the end of June, the Cuban police dismantled a network of multimillion-dollar scams in the illegal currency exchange in the city of Santa Clara, in Villa Clara, and arrested the four women who allegedly made it up.
From late 2023 until the time of their arrest, the detainees carried out more than 15 scam operations, with amounts for each ranging between 800,000 and over 1,000,000 Cuban pesos, according to Lieutenant Colonel Héctor de la Fe Freire, head of the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) in the city in central Cuba, as reported to the station CMHW.
In February, two men were also arrested in Santa Clara for their involvement in several cases of fraud related to the illegal sale of foreign currency.
A month earlier, in the same city, the police arrested three men and one woman for multiple cases of fraud and robbery with violence related to the buying and selling of foreign currency.
Around that time, with the increase in scams when making bank transfers through the Central Bank of Cuba's app, Transfermóvil, a Cuban made a video showing how criminals carry out these types of thefts. The young man warned his followers to observe the modus operandi of those he called "scammers," and he urged them not to be deceived.
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