Moroccan Couple Arrested for Running Fake Document Ring in Canary Islands Hair Salon

In the hairdresser’s premises, immigration candidates, determined to embark for Europe, were received. If they have a passport, the service is charged at 1,500 euros and 2,000 euros if not, according to sources from the investigation to La Razón.

The hairdresser’s operation was perfectly organized. He had "accomplices" who traveled to the hotels and NGOs where the immigrants were located to offer their services. The latter, once hooked, go to the hairdresser to pay for the service, or if they don’t have money, contact their relatives in Morocco from a telephone booth to request a money transfer. Then the hairdresser contacts a nearby travel agency and buys them plane or ferry tickets to which he adds a fake hotel reservation in the destination city.

A few hours before taking the plane or boat, the migrants, gathered at the hairdresser’s, are transported by a pickup truck to the port or airport. During one of these convoys, they were intercepted by national immigration police officers at Barajas airport. A search of the Moroccan’s hair salon and other stores belonging to him revealed nearly 4,000 passports and a registration log with the names of the migrants and the flight tickets purchased for each of them. In his safe, located in a place in the city, some 300,000 euros in cash were found.

All the elements of the network, namely the hairdresser, his wife, the person in charge of the telephone booth and the director of the travel agency, come from the Rif region. They were all arrested for document forgery and offenses against the rights of foreign citizens. The operation was then extended to other regions of Spain, leading to the arrest of 45 other people.