Women are tricked into fraud with bank accounts

Mireya was offered financial assistance in exchange for opening three bank accounts in her name so that relatives of inmates in a prison could deposit money for their upkeep, but in reality it was for a victim of extortion to transfer the funds demanded by criminals.

The 53-year-old woman was sentenced to 15 years in prison for aggravated extortion and is currently incarcerated in the Santa Martha Acatitla women's prison.

In an interview with El Heraldo de México, Mireya, a craftswoman, said that she was deceived by her ex-son-in-law and is now seeking to regain her freedom.

Mireya assured that she gave the bank card to the supposed wife of an inmate, as well as the cell phone on which they downloaded the financial institution's application, so she never saw when the money was withdrawn nor did she receive any account statement.

Because Mireya did not have a good lawyer, the Federal Public Defender Institute(IFDP) took her case and they are currently awaiting the resolution of the appeal.

Federal public defender Jorge Andrei Ballesteros told this media outlet that the IFDP has detected an increase in cases of women who are deprived of their liberty in this prison and in the Tepepan prison because their bank accounts were used to enter the financial system money derived from crimes such as extortion or kidnapping.

"They are women who end up with sentences of 8, 10 or even 30 and 50 years in prison for matters in which they, we cannot consider that they deserve to be punished by the State, they are victims of a lack of financial culture", said the IFDP member.

Ballesteros explained that in all these cases there is a man involved, even relatives or partners of the women, who trick them into opening the accounts or withdrawing the illicit money.

The lawyer explained another case, that of women entrepreneurs dedicated to the sale of products over the Internet, known as "Nenis", who were contacted by criminals to buy merchandise, but the payment was not made by them but by a person to whom they had previously charged "derecho de piso".

The extortionists kept the merchandise, while the women were arrested because they received the victim's money in their bank accounts.

The International Criminal Police Organization(Interpol) launched in 2022 the campaign Your account is your crime, in which it warns of criminal organizations that use people to facilitate the illicit movement of money within the financial system.

"This means that the person can be considered an accomplice to a money laundering scheme, even if they do not know how their account has been used," Interpol said.

PAL