In the last few hours, the police have arrested a woman known as "the Chinese," who is being accused of allegedly leading the gang responsible for defrauding the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). According to police sources, this person was involved in the fraudulent maneuvers to divert funds by distributing them into third-party accounts and then reintegrating them into the financial market.
The gang is said to be responsible for unauthorized withdrawals of more than 1,500,000,000 pesos from Banco Nación, after authorities from the Faculties of Law and Dentistry filed a complaint in October of last year. This arrest marks the sixth in the investigation, as the Federal Police recently captured five more members of this group, accused of creating fictitious companies and fraudulent email accounts to send transfer orders.
The detainees face charges of "illegal association and fraud" in relation to the transactions that took place in September of last year. The fraudulent maneuvers consisted of pretending to be personnel from the UBA Treasury and issuing orders for bank transfers through Electronic Payment Methods. According to the judicial report, thirteen transfers were identified for a total value of 1,591 million pesos, in addition to an attempt to authorize three more transfers for 341 million pesos.
The transfer orders were initially sent by email and later in printed form with forged signatures of authorized persons to operate the accounts of the mentioned universities. A fake email address, tesoreria@ubatic.net.ar, was used to send the transfer forms, the report details.
