Anna María Vicente Oset, 55 years old, popularly known as Anita la Fantástica, had an appointment at the courts of the Provincial Court of Madrid this week for a fraud case. It was not the first. This time the fraud amounted to 730,000 euros in travel packages to see MotoGP races, which she had sold from her agency but were never carried out. Considered “the biggest scammer in Spain,” with an accumulation of scams estimated at up to seven million euros, and hundreds of complaints throughout the national territory. One of the defrauded filed a complaint against her in the town of Alcalá de Henares, where the case was investigated, and whose trial ended at the Madrid Court.
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Anita, that woman who —according to her victims— “would take a taxi in Bilbao to get to a lunch in Madrid, make the taxi driver wait and then return with him to the Basque Country,” did not show up for her court appointment. It was the fourth time she failed to attend this summons in the capital and the judge issued a search and arrest warrant against her.
On previous occasions, Anita had avoided sitting on the bench citing health problems or issues related to her lawyers, or purely technological reasons, in order to postpone the hearing. But this time, her excuses must have run out and she let her partner, Eduardo García, 64 years old, take the full blame alone. He arrived handcuffed from the Basque prison, where he is serving a sentence for another fraud crime, in which she is also implicated, according to the lawyers of the accusations.
During the last decade, and in light of the numerous convictions she holds (500 pages occupy this last procedure), she professionalized the scams with her boyfriend. They would leave without paying at luxury hotels and restaurants, they even did a free ride with more than a hundred people on their wedding day. “They came to dinner with some friends and she, very friendly, told us they were getting married the next day at another restaurant, also near Bilbao,” the waiter later told the journalists of Equipo de Investigación.
“She left us 50 euros as a tip and paid with a check and, the next day, she showed up distressed saying that the restaurant agreed for her wedding had flooded and asked if we could prepare food for a hundred people. We said yes, they ate everything, and the best part, she paid us with another check, which we later discovered also had no funds,” explained the waiter. Queen of performance, Anita has lived for almost two decades chaining one scam after another, some bigger and others more modest. The Prosecutor’s Office now asks for nine years in prison for the scams involving the trips and tickets of the Motorcycle World Championship, with two companies and four individuals appearing as victims.
“She took care of everything,” Eduardo García answered this Friday to his lawyer’s questions, the only ones the accused wanted to answer. According to him, he only handled the logistics of the work, despite appearing as the sole administrator of Aupa Travel S.L., the supposed travel agency with which they operated. And it was Ana María, who is not listed as responsible for anything in the company, who actually handled the finances, accounting, and commercial campaigns of their companies.
She, overwhelming, talkative, exhibitor of a fake life surrounded by celebrities and luxury, a kind of full-fledged influencer, was in charge of attracting wealthy people to deposit large amounts into her bank accounts with the conviction that they were going to take a dream trip at a bargain price or that they would later receive a good compensation (double the invested amount) from travel insurance if these were canceled. But then there was neither a trip nor a refund.
Anita, who has faced the press on numerous occasions defending her innocence and claiming to be a victim of a conspiracy, took photos everywhere and posted all kinds of images on her Facebook profile: at motorcycle championships, in restaurants, in exotic vacation destinations, with celebrities, at her company, with the bouquets of roses she gave herself with cards from supposed personalities (Botín, Amancio Ortega…). The power of her deceptions is as great as her imagination.
Even when she was arrested and had to serve months in the Alava prison of Zaballa, she publicized on her social networks that she was in Houston (United States), curing cancer. Meanwhile, her cellmates said that, from prison, she ordered smoked salmon from El Corte Inglés and treated them all, besides giving each one a Christmas gift. Her deceiving qualities seem to have no limits.
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“She scammed me with trips to the Riviera Maya and with MotoGP tickets,” admits José Lema, a cattle rancher from Galicia who claims to have deposited 430,000 euros into her accounts. “We became friends at the Jerez motorcycle championship, through another friend, and I ended up working for her setting up motorcycle routes but, in reality, she paid me with the money she took from me for the travel packages,” he recounts.
Anna María Vicente Oset also did not hesitate to scam a congregation of nuns, Missionary Daughters of the Holy Family of Nazareth, who paid her 20,050 euros to process a ticket refund after being stranded in transit on a trip to Timor due to visa problems. Some of them ended up deported in Singapore and, of course, had to buy return tickets again with another agency.
Anita deceived the people she wanted to scam by treating them lavishly: “She invited them to eat in spectacular places, introduced them to the chef (with Michelin stars), gave them her signed book, flattered them with WhatsApp messages at all hours, got involved in their lives, met their families, earned their trust to the maximum and then… bam!”, describes the lawyer of one of the victims. “She took as much as she could, didn’t let them think, rushed them with the idea that it was a business opportunity, a cheap trip, a bargain, and they fell for it, they, their relatives, their friends…”, she says.
“Judicial lack of coordination between autonomous communities”
She has hundreds of complaints throughout Spain. “The judicial lack of coordination between some autonomous communities and others has allowed her to go from one place to another perpetrating new deceptions and scams without being detected,” admits a lawyer for the victims.
Her journey as a professional scammer began with a travel agency in Girona (Terra, mar y Aire) where she left dozens of victims with paid trips never made. And continued in the Basque Country, Galicia, Jerez de la Frontera, Almería, Alicante, while liquidating companies and creating new ones.
The victims have joined a Facebook group: “We are thousands of people who have been scammed by Aupa Travell, Grupo Furious, Anna Vicente and Eduardo,” they announce in Affected by Aupa Travell scam. And they narrate their adventures and warn of their danger: “Be very careful with these people, they take your money with lies selling fake tickets and promotional packages.”
The trial at the Provincial Court of Madrid was concluded last Wednesday and is awaiting judgment. The prosecutor includes in his brief up to three previous final convictions against the accused in different parts of Spain (Huelva, Girona, Jerez de la Frontera…), and requests nine years in prison for both and that they compensate the victims with 730,536 euros, in addition to the company Aupa Travel S. L. being sentenced to pay a fine of almost three million euros.
Anita la fantástica no longer answers calls or messages on her usual phone. Her followers claim that she “has changed professions and is dedicated to golf championships,” but now she is being sought by land, sea, and air.
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