Man found guilty of murdering 3 brothers in Spain over debts linked to online romance scam

A Spanish jury found a Pakistani man guilty on Thursday of murdering three brothers in their 70s for debts allegedly related to a online romance scam.

In Spain, a jury’s guilty verdict is followed by a judge’s sentence, which is usually announced days or weeks later.

Prosecutors are seeking a 36-year prison sentence for Dilawar Hussain, who admitted killing two sisters and their disabled brother in Morata de Tajuna, near Madrid, in December 2023.

Hussain has been detained since he turned himself in the following month, after police found the brothers’ bodies partially burned inside their home.

The brothers had been beaten to death, possibly with an iron bar, authorities said.

The civil guard claimed that the motive for the crime appeared to be a debt the brothers owed the suspect, linked to the sisters’ apparent involvement in an online scam, BBC News reported.

Neighbors told Spanish media that two sisters believed they had long-distance relationships with two apparent American servicemen.

They were made to believe that one of the soldiers had died and that the other needed money to cover expenses and to be able to send them a part of a multimillion-dollar inheritance, which caused the sisters to accumulate significant debts.

Hussain, who rented a room in the sisters’ home, allegedly lent them at least $58,000, which they never repaid, prompting him to attack one of the sisters with a hammer in February 2023.

He received a two-year prison sentence for the attack, but it was suspended because it was his first crime, as is usual in Spanish legislation.

During his testimony Tuesday at his trial in Madrid for the brothers’ murders, Hussain asked for forgiveness and said he “heard voices.”

“I was not in my right mind,” he said, according to Spanish media reports.

Enrique Velilla, a local man who was a friend of the victims, said the women’s insistence on sending money to their alleged boyfriends had led them to sell a property they owned in Madrid, BBC News reported.

“We told them that everything was a lie, that it was a scam,” he said. “But they didn’t want to hear the word ‘scam.'”

Hussain faces a separate trial for the alleged murder of his 39-year-old Bulgarian cellmate in February 2024 while in a Madrid prison awaiting trial for the brothers’ deaths.

Romance scammers steal billions of dollars from people looking for love, and their tactics have evolved in sinister ways in the online age. More than 64,000 Americans were held hostage for more than $1 billion in romance scams in 2023, double the $500 million just four years earlier, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

Approximately half of the people who consume dating sites They say they have come across someone who has tried scam them, according to Rep. Brittany Pettersen, a Colorado Democrat, who says tech platforms need to do a better job of protecting their users.

“No matter how advanced you think your ability is to understand what’s out there, they’re going to fool so many people and we really have to confront this,” said Republican Rep. David Valadao of California. told News themezone in 2024.