British couple fakes kidnap and threatens parents
Tuesday, July 7, 2015 @ 10:23 AM
A BRITISH couple has been arrested at a Costa Blanca villa for faking a kidnap in order to extort money from the woman's parents and gain back custody of their daughter.
Guardia Civil officers and the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) report that a British man sent a series of emails and text messages to his wife's parents demanding ransom money.
He told them he had his wife hostage and that unless they sent him 5,000 pounds (about €6,500) and let the couple have their young daughter back, he would kill his spouse.
The woman's parents in Manchester, UK have custody of their granddaughter because of the child's father's history of violent criminal activity, says the NCA.
Some of the messages included photos which seemed to be of the wife tied up in a bedroom with multiple bruising to her face - but this turned out to have been staged, and the bruises were painted on with make-up.
British police worked out that the couple may be in a villa in Guardamar del Segura, in the south of the Alicante province on the coast, and contacted the Guardia Civil.
Spanish officers kept the villa under close watch from a discreet distance, and saw no movement or anything suspicious happening inside it.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com