Investigation
Torremolinos elderly resident takes his own life after fraud leaves him with 68 eurosFive defendants will appear before the court, facing sentences of up to eight years in prison
Images from the Torremolinos case summary that show the charges to the victim's account. (SUR)Juan Cano
29/04/2026 a las 12:13h.A 73-year-old man from Torremolinos took his own life in June 2022, after fraudsters stole his bank card and emptied more than 58,000 euros from his account in a matter of days.
Pedro committed suicide shortly after the alleged scam. He hung himself in an open field in Cañada del Lobo and his family is absolutely certain that the reason was the "very precarious" situation he was left in and the "deep personal anguish" he experienced at finding himself without money to meet his expenses.
The National Police have since carried out a laborious investigation and identified all the individuals allegedly involved in the case. Now, the Malaga prosecution is bringing the defendants to trial for the fraud, seeking up to six years in prison. The private prosecution is requesting up to eight years.
The investigators who handled the case suspected eight people of their alleged involvement in the events, although both the prosecution and the family's legal representative have requested the dismissal of the case regarding three of them. As a result, the three individuals will not be charged in the trial.
The public prosecution places three people at the centre of the fraud: two men and a woman who, allegedly stole Pedro's card and a piece of paper on which he had written his PIN. The exact date of the theft is unknown, but the investigators believe it occurred sometime between 18 and 24 April 2022.
The defendants, "acting in concert and driven by the desire for illicit gain", allegedly carried out 73 fraudulent transactions with the card, "without the consent or knowledge of the cardholder". This happened between 24 April and 10 May. They made withdrawals at ATMs, purchases at shops and supermarkets and expenses at nightclubs.
On 24 April, the card balance was 58,278 euros. By 10 May, only 68.73 euros had remained in Pedro's account. The prosecution notes that two of the defendants carried out many of these transactions partially concealing their faces with masks and caps to avoid identification by the security cameras of the establishments where they made the card payments.
The investigators still found a lead. Around that time, a woman, who was the partner of one of the suspects, paid for her groceries at a supermarket with Pedro's card. As she left, she asked the cashier if she could take a courtesy trolley outside to carry the bags to her car. To do so, she had to leave her personal details. This clue allowed the investigators to identify the next links in the chain of events.
Pedro filed the report on 10 May 2022, when he realised his card was missing and discovered that all the money in his bank account had vanished. "As a result of these events, Pedro found himself in a precarious financial situation, unable to make his monthly payments, which caused him profound personal distress," the prosecution states. He took his own life less than a month later, on 6 June.
The prosecution is seeking six-year prison sentences for the two men for fraud and a three-year and six-month sentence for the woman. It is also demanding that the men jointly pay Pedro's legal heirs 58,210 euros - the amount they had allegedly defrauded, plus an additional 20,000 euros for the emotional distress.
The private prosecution is asking for eight years in prison for the two men and six for the woman. The family's lawyer is also requesting that two other women be brought to trial. One of them ran the café where the first credit card charge was made. She is the partner of one of the defendants and is the registered owner of the rental car used to "commit some of the scams". They are also requesting a six-year prison sentence for her.
The other woman, for whom the private prosecutor is seeking four years in prison, runs a nightlife venue where large sums were spent using the card. In the prosecution's view, those high bills could only point to her acting in collusion with those involved in the fraud.