Twice a victim: scammed and abandoned by his bank
Santi had his accounts emptied. Four years after being scammed out of €12,500, he denounces the bank’s indifference for continuing to charge him for a fraudulent loan despite a court ruling in his favor.
What happened to Santi could happen to anyone. In his case, it’s more painful because he is a person with recognized disabilities. But in the world we live in, the reality is that none of us are safe from heartless people who take advantage of human vulnerability, the desire to meet someone, the willingness to help those in need, and the hope of feeling less alone.
We won’t go into the details of the scam. It’s not worth it. Anyone can imagine them. This story has more to do with Santi’s helplessness (a fictitious name) in the face of injustice and indifference.
Life hasn’t been easy for this young man from Fuerteventura, diagnosed shortly after reaching adulthood: “I have Usher syndrome. Type 3, which is the most severe of all. I’m losing my peripheral vision, and centrally, I see as if in a tunnel. I’m losing my hearing and balance. Those three things form the syndrome, and apart from that, I have type 1 diabetes.” With his medical condition, the symptoms worsen over time, to the point where he now needs hearing aids and a cane to help him walk. His degree of disability, which was initially 42%, is now recognized as 95%.
With this background, he walked into the Banco Santander branch on Primero de Mayo in Puerto del Rosario, court ruling in hand, accompanied by his friend and lawyer, Pablo Gómez, to ask for assistance. Between one thing and another, more than €12,500 was taken from Santi’s accounts. These were all his savings. In large figures, over €7,000 in transfers, and another €5,500 from a loan he never requested. He was received by the bank’s deputy director, and Pablo and Santi explained the case, which began four years earlier.
Everything happened very quickly, in just 23 days, between October and November 2021. Santi was the victim of several deceptions. A false illness, “let me have your ID, for the job I told you about,” “don’t tell anyone”… Twenty-three days after meeting her, his account was in the red. With his family’s help, Santi went to the police and filed a complaint. “He did it very well,” assures his lawyer friend, because “he had everything proven, the messages, the documents, the transfers.”
The trial came three and a half years later. It was in May 2025, at the Criminal Court No. 2 of Puerto del Rosario. It was ruled in his favor, with a consent ruling, for a continued crime of falsification in commercial documents, along with another continued crime of fraud. The convicted woman, a repeat offender for previous scams, admitted the facts in exchange for reducing her sentence from three and a half years to two years in prison. A ruling that is also final, since there was consent, “there is no possibility of appeal.”
Pablo Gómez accompanied him that day because the prosecution was handled by the prosecutor. The magistrate determined that the fraudster had contracted, in Santi’s name, a loan of €5,585 without his consent. The law is clear on this matter: “Without consent, there is no valid contract,” emphasizes Gómez, citing the requirement established in Article 1,261 of the Civil Code.
After the trial, neither lawyer nor victim heard from her again, whether she went to prison or where she was. And although the ruling is recent, what is clear is that for now, she has not returned a single one of the €12,763.90, plus interest, that the magistrate ordered her to compensate.
The Bank Turns Its Back on Him
Santi and Pablo expected that the bank, after learning of the ruling, would understand the situation. On the first visit, they were attended by the branch’s deputy director. “He asks us for the ruling to scan it, and comments that he will elevate it to a higher body, and that he will notify us.” But no one contacted them. Eleven days later, they received a call: The request to cancel the loan had been rejected. “I asked for the reasons, and he didn’t quite explain… I asked him to send it in writing, and they didn’t send anything either,” relates the lawyer.
Although they did agree to another meeting, this time with the branch director, who received them on July 7." A month after the first meeting, they confirmed the rejection of the request. “He only told us that he was not a lawyer,” and that “he simply obeys the orders given to him.” It is from there that Pablo Gómez, in defense of his client and friend, begins to investigate the entity’s responsibilities.
Pablo Gómez, lawyer and friend of the affected person.
“I started making requests to them, which they have all ignored. One of them is that they identify the commercial manager of Santi’s accounts, between October and November 2021. This fact is very important to clarify the legal responsibilities, because we must remember, before the €5,500 loan, more than €7,000 had already been withdrawn from his bank account. With the account at zero, what kind of negligence is that? They give a loan to a person without seeing them face to face, without verifying their identity, and moreover with the account without funds. Didn’t that raise any eyebrows at the bank?”
Santi’s Frustration: “The Bank Hasn’t Shown Empathy”
For this new joint report between Diario de Fuerteventura and Fuerteventura Digital, the questions for the affected person, given the circumstances, have been limited. It’s harder for him to listen than to speak, because he expresses himself perfectly. And as an adult, and a person who has worked to earn his money, he is fully aware that “the bank has handled this very badly. I’m very disappointed.” “They haven’t wanted to cancel the loan, even though I’m in the right. The court gave it to me.”
“Before 2021, I had savings from what I had worked,” he recalls, listing various government programs. “I stopped until 2024, when I worked at the town hall, and that’s where I was saving.” The rest of his income, he explains, comes from “a pension I receive as a dependent child, which is from my mother, for being a disabled child.”
At the last meeting, the director “told me he couldn’t cancel the loan. Pablo asked: Then, aren’t you going to keep charging the installments to my client? And he said yes, until it’s canceled. He told us to report her ourselves. But that doesn’t make sense, because she’s already been reported and convicted.” So he ends up regretting that “I feel very bad, because the bank hasn’t shown empathy with me.”
At this point, Santi’s case is heading to civil justice. “We are in a moment of prior mediation before filing a lawsuit. We request, in accordance with the law, that Santi’s loan be canceled, because he did not consent. We obviously ask that they stop charging the installments linked to that loan, and return the ones he has been paying since October 2021 until now.” That’s already €3,594.
“Seeing that they have ignored us, they have disrespected us, and that they don’t give written responses,” anticipates Gómez, it will most likely be a lawsuit next. They regret the entity’s attitude in a case of flagrant injustice. But if no one listens to them, “we only have a civil lawsuit left.”
Pablo Gómez, Lawyer
“I believe there has been negligence at Banco Santander”
The Fuerteventura lawyer Pablo Gómez, in front of Banco Santander.
Santi’s lawyer, who has helped him in this case out of friendship and solidarity, without any fee, does not hide his indignation at Banco Santander’s inattention to one of its clients. From the beginning, he recounts, “I believe there has been negligence. First, for granting a loan with Santi’s account at zero.” But also, because they could have remedied it from the beginning.
As Santi himself relates, his first contact with the bank was right after the scam, in 2021. When “my account was in the negative and that’s when I filed the complaint. I went to the police to report in November, and after that, I called the bank to see if they could cancel my loan. But they told me no, that I had to talk to a lawyer about it. That’s where it stayed.”
To Santi’s explanations, Pablo Gómez adds an interesting fact, which is that “all operations were within the same Banco Santander.” The money was transferred to four accounts, two of the convicted woman, and two other accounts of someone in her circle. “In 23 days, €12,500 flew away and no one reacted.”
“We never received a written response from the bank,” concludes Gómez, which “leads us to suppose that they are aware of acting irregularly, and that’s why they don’t want to leave a record.” But “we have sent the ruling by burofax, email, and WhatsApp. They cannot claim ignorance.”
This report is the result of a collaboration between Fuerteventura Digital and Diario de Fuerteventura, published jointly, with images from Fuerteventura Digital.
Tags: cybercrime disability fraud courts report Banco Santander