Man used fake fingerprints to try to secure $60 million loan in someone else’s name

His group would operate in the main cities of the center of the country

The ingenuity of a gang of crooks operating in the center of the country almost surpasses the Metropolitan Police of Tunja after a man in his forties attempted to request a credit of 60 million pesos in one of the banking entities in the capital of the department of Boyacá, pretending to be another person, with an identity document in hand and false fingerprints on his fingers.

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However, the nerves would have betrayed the delinquent posing as Martin Francisco Rodriguez Lopez while being attended by one of the workers of the entity, who noticed that something strange was happening, according to deputy Yeimar Aguilar, head of the banking reaction group in the capital of Boyacá.

“What is striking in this case is that this citizen had stuck to his fingers fingerprints made with latex, belonging to the person he was going to impersonate”, explained the officer, according to a magazine Week.

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The man is believed to be part of a gang that operates in towns like Bogota, Tunja and Medellin which uses this new mode of flight, thanks to its link with officials within the banking entities that can issue the typed letter and the photo ID of the users they seek to impersonate.

“They have the original ID, they get the fingerprints and do all the paperwork with different banks, not just here in Tunja, Bogotá, Medellín, several cities where they can commit this type of scam,” revealed the Colonel Fredy Pérez, Commander of the Metropolitan Police of Tunja in an interview for Snail News.

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And he added: “The bank employee comes, finds a nervous person, checks them and finds silicone, latex in their fingerprints. Later we do the check with our criminal investigation experts and they find out that ‘he was trying to get an impersonation with his fingerprints and an ID which of course wasn’t his.

The banking authorities contacted the police, an entity which summoned experts in the matter to analyze this new modality that would have been used for some time in the main cities of Colombia, but which until now has only raised doubts, since it requires Specialized team for the generation of false fingerprints.

“The fingerprints that they get from public or private entities are scanned, they are made in a scanner, they go to a typography and they make this mold so that they can place it on the fingers of these people and place the figure of the fingerprints of the person they are trying to impersonate,” Mayor José Muñoz, a Tunja police fingerprint expert, explained to the news.

For now, and until we know more about how the fingerprints on latex they asked banking entities to check the fingerprints of those who arrive to apply for a loan, as he added:

“We are campaigning with banking entities that when these people get any type of credit, they have to check their fingerprints very well.”

The man, however, was release a few hours after its capture. “This man had a criminal record for offenses of fraud, theft, bodily harm, domestic violence and lack of food,” said MP Yeimar Aguilar.

However, authorities are hoping to find the other members of the gang, hoping to understand their criminal behavior and where they got the equipment needed for the impersonation.

“We invite citizens to contribute to security by providing timely information or by calling the official channels of the police institution in complete confidentiality,” the publication refers to.