According to Deputy Commissioner Mateus Rodrigues, the suspects acted in a premeditated and organized manner, with the arrests having occurred following several complaints made on social media and the victims' participation in police pickets.
"Although the victims were mostly from the province of Luanda, the criminals identified targets throughout the country, using social networks and direct or random telephone calls", said the police spokesman, noting that the suspects "proposed, in an attractive way, things that quickly aroused the interest of the people who were the target of the scam".
According to Mateus Rodrigues, the detainees created fake profiles on the social network Facebook, pretending to be friends of influential people or even peaceful citizens, exchanging messages, asking for help from people, who they thought they were talking to friends, who could reach to 2.4 million kwanzas.
"They were made to believe that they were very distressed by some concern that moved the 'friends', who, in fact, were being victims of a crime of fraud. The victims moved by the situation of false friends made bank transfers and only later realized that they were cheated", he added.
Another mechanism used by the suspects, also using fake profiles on Facebook, associated with "women, young people with good looks and attractive physiques", was to seduce victims, exchanging messages with expressions of a sexual nature, as well as exchanging of intimate photographs between them.
"Then they made telephone calls to the victims, pretending to be relatives of an alleged minor who was being seduced by someone of legal age, demanding, by way of compensation, large sums of money for the damages of psychological violence and harassment otherwise, they would publish the intimate photos or file a complaint with the Police", he stressed.
Mateus Rodrigues underlined that another way of operating was through phone calls to several people, promising employment, making the victims "slyly" fall into the trap, making bank transfers of monetary values ranging between 100,000 kwanzas and 700,000 kwanzas.
During the arrest, the police seized 18 mobile phones of different brands and an ATM card, which they used to engender criminal actions.
Mateus Rodrigues informed, in the act of presenting the elements to the media, that the arrests took place under two arrest warrants, resulting from two criminal proceedings, related to crimes of coercion, qualified fraud and criminal association.
A team of investigators assigned to the province of Cabinda, where the suspects usually reside, led the operation to detain the suspects.
The 13 elements were detained in the province of Cabinda, and the Public Prosecutor's Office ordered them and the seized assets to be sent to Luanda, where the legal procedures for the two criminal proceedings are ongoing, allied to the fact that the plaintiffs had participated in the capital of country.
