Cancun, Q.R. — An office used as a call center to sell vacation packages in Cancun has been dismantled. Investigative Police closed down the illegal discount vacation package centre after operating nearly three years.
So far, eight people have been arrested. Those in custody are from the company’s sales team. Police began an investigation and made the arrests after public complaints began to surface.
On Monday, Raciel López Salazar, head the State Attorney General’s Office (FGE), reported on the dismantling of the call center that defrauded several people with fake vacation packages. The centre, which sold discounted Cancun vacation packages, was found operating out of a building in SM 40.
According to López Salazar, they operated under the guise of a travel agency offering highly discounted vacation packages. Through phone calls, websites and social media campaigns that use real images of well-known hotels, the victims were persuaded to transfer partial and even full payment for their package into bank accounts.
Authorities detailed that the employees operated with a sales strategy, being paid 2,000 pesos a week plus a 35 percent commission on each sale. The cell that ran the illegal discounted vacation package company earned between 300,000 and 400,000 pesos a month in profits for the approximately three years they were in operation.
Salazar said they frequently changed the business name of the agency to avoid being tracked down and used multiple bank accounts in the names of third parties. They also deleted their company’s social media pages and digital profiles after carrying out the scams, making it difficult to locate evidence against them.
With a changed business name and deleted online pages, scam victims were left without any way to verify who they contacted, however, police were able to track them down.
In custody are Jenny “N”, Patricia “N”, Yumegli “N”, Carlos Augusto “N”, Jorge Arturo “N”, Kevin Esteban “N”, Juan “N” and Gilbert “N”. According to Salazar, all eight are facing charges of fraud, organized crime and misuse of electronic media. He says they are expanding their investigation in collaboration with prosecutors’ offices across the country to determine if those in custody have prior charges in other states.
