The woman who reports a man for having snatched 142,000 euros from her through the so-called “love scam,” after persuading her that he had her bank account blocked and that he needed cash for her day-to-day expenses and for the treatment of a serious illness in her dog, has declared this Friday at trial that she was “completely deceived”: “I was in love, I wanted him, but everything was false.” The defendant has categorically denied it and has argued that they had “a normal couple relationship” and that “at no time” did he ask him for money, but that he only “explained what was happening.”
The oral hearing, held this Friday in the second section of the Provincial Court of Valencia, has been scheduled for sentencing after the Public Prosecutor’s Office confirmed its request for four years and three months in prison for the defendant for a fraud offense, a sentence that the private prosecution raises to five years. The defense, on the other hand, seeks a full acquittal.
According to the account of the public prosecutor, the events occurred between September 2023 and October 2024, when the accused, who already has previous convictions for other fraud offenses, would have pretended to want to start a stable romantic relationship and a shared life project with the complainant, with the sole purpose of getting money from her.
Overall, he is alleged to have deceived her in order to obtain 142,000 euros. Of that amount, 80,340 euros would have been sent to her via Bizum, and, given that the monthly limit of this application is 5,000 euros, he would also have given her an additional 46,000 euros in cash that she withdrew from the bank, as well as 35,660 euros coming from the salaries he was paid in cash for his work as a domestic worker.
The victim has explained that she met the man in 2019 through the social network TikTok and that she started following his livestreams, in which he showed different corners of València. One day she saw him broadcasting from Plaza del Ayuntamiento and, when she found herself nearby, she decided to go over to see him in person. After that, he privately invited her to have dinner and to record some videos together, but when she rejected the proposal, “it seemed wrong to him” and “the supposed friendship we had was broken.”
After that disagreement, he blocked her and she stopped hearing from him until 2023, when he got in touch again from another account. As he has related, he told her that he was sorry, that they could resume their friendship and she agreed to give him a second chance. On the second face-to-face date, he began telling her about his alleged problems: that he had to leave the rented flat and that his bank account was blocked because his ex-wife had tried to commit a crime by signing documents to withdraw money in his name. "I didn’t doubt him at any time," the woman has said.
From then on, they continued to see each other as friends and he told her that he had been scammed 500 euros while trying to rent a home —he even sent her photos of the flat, as he explained— and that a follower had already advanced him 250 euros. "Since she is his friend, well, I say, I’m going to make him a bizum of the other 250 euros. He thanks me and he even starts crying. I tell him, it’s okay, calm down," she recalled during the trial.
From that moment on, according to her testimony, the relationship began to become "more intense and personal, liking each other more, trying to be a couple." He showed her a supposed document from the banking entity in which they informed him of the next unblocking of the account, "which doesn’t happen," and in October he assured her that he didn’t have money to "pay for anything." "I wanted him, he said he wanted me and that the relationship was more intense," she said to the court.
It was then that she began making him bizums because, according to him, "he had to move flats, he needed money for the gym, they were going to cut off the electricity and water and the wifi, and the dog needed transfusions, more than a thousand euros each, and that he needed them all every week, and that if the dog died he would go after it." "I was in love, we had plans to do it, the three of us, him, Paquito —the dog— and me," the complainant said.
The woman proposed buying his food directly and taking it to the home, but he rejected the offer. "Of course, he wanted the money," she said. Since the bizum limit is 5,000 euros per month, when he exceeded that amount he withdrew additional sums from the bank, of 1,500 or 2,000 euros, which he gave her in an envelope at the entrance to his home. She has clarified that he never ended up going up to the flat.
On an October Saturday, he called her to tell her that they had detained him for a matter related to his ex-wife and that later he would explain it to her. The next day, she went to his home with the keys he himself had given her —he had told her that if anything happened to him, to look after the dog because "I already knew they were going to detain him"—, but she couldn’t do it.
"COMPLETELY DECEIVED"
When she opened the door, she found a girl who told her that she had been working for a year as a domestic worker in the house. "Everything is coming down on me. I’ve been completely deceived; if there is no money, how can she pay a domestic worker," she has lamented, and she has stated that "on many occasions" she demanded the return of part of the money.
The accused has rejected the version of the complainant. He has commented that he went through "a very dark period," that he was in pretrial detention and subsequently serving a sentence and that, when he got out, he tried to put his life back together. "We started a relationship; it was very nice, the typical thing couples did, building a future a thousand years ago that I didn’t have, where you hear someone say 'I love you' or they worry about you—honestly, it was that...", he told the court.
He has insisted that "at no time did she come out of me 'Ana give me so much money' I only explained to her what was happening, what I was going through during the day; I told her about it minimized, not maximized," and he has maintained that "I always" intended to return the money and that she never demanded it from him. "That she had enough," he has said that he told her.