Costa del Sol travel agent arrested again after more complaints of alleged scams

Eugenio Cabezas

Vélez-Málaga

Wednesday, 22 May 2024, 13:56

Police on the eastern strip of the Costa del Sol have arrested the owner of the Ymanme travel agency in Torre del Mar for a second time after new alleged scam victims emerged.

The 51-year-old woman was released with charges after the first arrest, but National Police in Vélez-Málaga apprehended her again on Monday 20 May after detecting at least 15 new victims of alleged frauds, amounting to 20,000 euros.

This is in addition to 70 previous clients of whom she allegedly swindled out of 127,000 euros. Police officers received the new complaints in the past few days, after several new cases were reported in the media.

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One case in Antequera, in mid-April, left a group of students stranded and unable to travel to England, and resulted in them losing 26,975 euros.

It was the parents and teachers of the IES María Zambrano school who raised the alarm when reporting the swindling of another 3,632 euros for a study trip to Germany. The group of 18 people affected had booked a study and exchange trip to Germany for their children in 2nd, 3rd and 4th ESO, valued at a total of 3,632 euros, at a rate of 227 euros per person.

From then on, complaints followed one after another, such as that of a group of residents of Vélez-Málaga who lost more than 64,000 euros for a scam trip to the Greek islands, including a plane and a cruise. As SUR has learned, there are others who have been scammed with cancelled trips to Bordeaux in France, Marrakech in Morocco and New York, among other international destinations.

The woman was initially arrested on 8 May. She went before a judge, who released her on bail while investigations continued.