Spanish triple murder: What is online ‘love scam’ that led to killings, Pakistani-origin man’s arrest?

An online romance scam in a small Spanish town led to the murders of three elderly siblings. The suspect in the case, a Pakistani-origin man turned himself in and confessed that he murdered the three siblings as they were unable to pay their debt.

The bodies of the three siblings- Amelia, 67, Ángeles, 74, and José Gutiérrez Ayuso, 77, were found at their home last week. They had been partially burned.

The horrifying incident took place in a town of Madrid called Morata de Tajuna. The Spanish Police are currently investigating the case and the circumstances under which the siblings would have been murdered.

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What is the whole case of the Spanish triple murder?

As per neighbours and friends of the siblings, Amelia and Angeles were dating two men online whom they supposedly called their fiancés. The third sibling Ayuso was not involved in any such online relationship, but all three of them used to live together.

As per local media, Amelia and Angeles used to claim that they had been engaged online for several years with these men, who they believed were in the US Army.

The siblings used to send money online to these men and as per reports, the two women had sent up to €400,000 ($436,232) to a man they knew as ‘Edward’. Ayuso, who had a mental disability, was not involved in the sending of the money.

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These relationships exhausted the siblings’ finances, forcing sisters to ask local people for money and ask for help from informal moneylenders. As per Spain’s ABC newspaper, they even asked the mayor and priest of the town for money.

Hussain knew the siblings when he lived in their home as a lodger for several months. He told police that the sisters owed him a large sum of money which he had given them as a high-interest loan, but they never paid him back.

Hussain accepted that he first attacked Amelia twice with a hammer in February 2023, after which he was sentenced to two years in jail. But he was released after seven months last September.

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Police entered the home of the three siblings on Thursday after neighbours said they had not seen or heard from them for several weeks.

Neighbours said that even their bank warned them of a possible online scambut they were not ready to hear the word ‘scam’.

(With inputs from agencies)