Police in Spain began their raids last week in the town of Alicante, in south-eastern Spain, according to local media TodoAlicante on Friday (June 14). In total 110 suspects, including 27 women, were arrested around Spain, accused of distributing fake work permits to migrants to regularize their status.

The suspects are suspected of selling falsified work contracts to migrant workers without the correct papers to seek employment in Spain. Once the contracts were signed, the migrants were able to take the contracts to the Spanish authorities and acquire a stay permit.

According to news reports, immigration bureaus in Alicante, Murcia, Toledo, Huesca, Navarra and Coruna in Spain were affected by the fake contracts.

Numerous charges

Prosecutors have charged the suspects not only with facilitating illegal migration and falsification of official documents and fraud, but also defrauding the Spanish welfare system. At least eight businesses are suspected of having collaborated with the gang, reports TodoAlicante. Investigators suspect the gang may have made as much as 980,000 euros.

The series of arrests took place after a two-and-a-half-year-long inquiry. Investigations were sparked after an Algerian man told police that he had paid 3,500 euros to a businessman in order to obtain a false work contract and then start claiming welfare benefits in Spain, stated a police press release.

Following the initial lead, police say they received four additional reports of Algerian citizens who said they had paid money to obtain their contracts.

The suspected head of the gang is reported to be a 74-year-old Spanish man. He is accused of maintaining a link between the workers and the Spanish businesses that may have participated. The Spanish press reported that many of the suspects were also migrants, who acted as intermediaries and recruited migrants who might be interested in buying these contracts. According to TodoAlicante, the other suspects hail from Algeria, Morocco, Spain, Colombia, Ecuador, Bangladesh and Poland.

Also read: Spain, immigrant labor bridging job market gaps

Similar network in Toledo dismantled in April

At the beginning of April, another similar network was dismantled by police. This one was based in Toledo, south of Madrid and is thought to have charged migrants around 16,000 euros per person to enter Spain and be given a work permit, according to Spanish news reports. The gang’s three suspected members are thought to have made contracts for about 100 migrants and perhaps made profits of up to one million euros.

In this case, according to prosecutors, migrants in Morocco were contacted by the suspected gang members. The gang members would then sell fake work contracts to the migrants, making them believe that once they had the contract, they would not only have a job waiting for them but could apply for a stay permit too in Spain.

The migrants would then transfer the sum of around 16,000 euros with the expectation of obtaining a legal job in the agriculture sector. When they arrived, however, they discovered that not only was there no job waiting for them, but also no stay permits. The migrants then found themselves in a very difficult situation, reported Spanish media.

Also read: Spain, parliament votes to consider regularizing undocumented migrants

False documents for minors

In mid-May, the Spanish Interior Ministry released a press release on its website, also detailing the dismantling of a gang suspected of supplying false documents to migrants who are minors.

In this case, according to the government press release, the minors were on the island of Lanzarote in the Spanish Canary Islands archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean. They were staying in special accommodation centers on both Lanzarote and Gran Canaria when they were contacted by Moroccan citizens who offered them the possibility of transferring to mainland Spain. The group is suspected of supplying the minors with false documents so they could travel.

Seven suspects were detained in the Spanish region of Murcia, according to the press release. They are accused of attempting to exploit the minors and taking advantage of the precarious situation in which they found themselves. The minors are believed to have paid them between 1,000 and 2,000 euros for the documents.

Relatives of the suspects arrested are thought to run travel agencies and call shops, which police suspect were used to book the plane tickets and other travel arrangements for the minors.

'Left to their fate'

Once the minors arrived in mainland Spain, the police say the gang took the false documents back from the minors, "leaving them to their fate." That’s when the police got wind of it, as left alone in Spain, many of the minors presented themselves to the authorities, in order to regain access to the special accommodation available to them.

According to the Ministry of the Interior press release, the gang is thought to have also used other migrant routes, like the Balkan route, to get the minors to mainland Spain. Sometimes, they paid for migrants to fly from Morocco to Balkan countries, then asked them to travel via Italy and France before arriving in Spain, sometimes by bus.

Most of the unaccompanied minors were originally from Morocco. Spanish police had been registering a higher incidence than usual of young Moroccans, mostly based in the capital Madrid, as well as the southern town of Malaga, as well as Valencia and Barcelona. The minors would arrive at police stations devoid of documentation but claiming to be a minor.

When police searched properties suspected to have been used by the gang, they found 5,500 euros in cash, as well as computer equipment and mobile phone devices. They also found Moroccan passports and other documentation related to the investigation, stated the press release.

Also read: Migrant arrivals to Spain up 277 percent