the disturbing story of the Spanish gigolo who stole 3 million euros

It was as if he had been touched. One of those who hurt. It hurt a lot. He was her partner. In fact, it had been a while. But not anymore. In fact now she did not know with whom she had shared her privacy, his family. All. His name was not his name. He also didn’t do what he said he did. I slept with the enemy. And it all ended worse than a nightmare.

It is the story of a woman. But like her, there were many. At least 50. It was they who dared to say that they had fallen into the trap of a psychopath as cruel as it is disturbing. A man who has dedicated his life to ruining and destroying the lives of others.

In case of Francisco Gómez Manzanares rocked Spain in 2017. The list of his disappointments seemed endless. The number of victims too. The crook, a journalist’s book Guillem Sanchez, tells his story and reveals what is behind this great crook who stayed with more than three million euros thanks to his lies.

One man, one ghost, several incarnations

Everyone knew him as David. What has changed is the last name. It could be Pons, Hernández, Barceló. However, your document is clear. It indicates that his name is Francisco Gómez Manzanares.

With his job the same has happened. He could be an Iberia pilot or an administrator of his father’s companies; Formula 1 car tester of the Fernando Alonso team or member of the Staff From Barcelona. And, of course, Messi and Neymar’s right-hand man.

The staging has always been perfect. Impeccable. I know looked depending on what he was doing. When he claimed to work for the airline, for example, there was always a pilot’s suit in his car. When he was a club employee, his trunk was full of Barça jerseys and balls.

These fantastic occupations allowed him to be away for long periods of time and also to come into contact with interesting characters. Were it entrepreneurs and millionaires, whom he would have known through their activities, which they offered him business and opportunities. He generously shared them with his acquaintances.

The only real thing is that none of this was true. Since the 1990s, he has devoted himself to deceiving anyone who crosses his path. And in recent years, in particular, women.

His (real) story

Francois was born in 1974 in Vitoria, a city in northern Spain. Her father was a baker; her mother, a housewife who was struggling with depression. The last of six children, his childhood was normal. He grew up in a middle-class neighborhood, had friends, and was a regular student.

The first problems appeared just after adolescence. He had been 20 years old. Several traders in the region denounce him for having deceived them. As it turns out, the young man had taken cars, motorcycles and even video cameras to the premises, delivering false documents proving he made the bank transfers as payment.

Since, and for years, was developing a cheating mechanism that allowed him to live – and very well – at the cost of frauds and lies.

His world was growing. Madrid, Seville, Jerez de la Frontera, Barcelona or Algeciras were, among others, witnesses of their scams. Since 1994 has been jailed 16 times.

He was only looking to lead a life of luxury. And that’s how it came to be. He moved in high end cars. He was talking about a powerful family. He boasted of a model sister and a niece he adored. He ate in expensive places. There he was weaving his nets, he wins the trust of regulars and enlists them in non-existent projects.

He convinced them to participate in profitable businesses that were only in his head. Then once he got the money and the lie couldn’t stand faded away.

An impostor on the web

With the arrival of the new century, added the technology to your strategy. Cell phones and the Internet have made their contribution.

This change has made it easier to communicate, meet and seduce. Chat and messaging services first, and apps later, have become their new great allies.

“Since 2000, Francisco has lived in play your character», Said Guillem Sánchez in an interview with El País. “It comes to him 24 hours a day, seven days a week. He becomes a hard worker, a very, very committed person.”

Women have become his target. I chose them in to chatter and applications go out together. There were single and divorced people. Many were disillusioned, all suffered from loneliness. And there he came. The Prince Charming who was going to save them, the man who told them what they needed to hear.

Cold, he played with his feelings without the slightest hint of empathy. To whom he wanted to be a mother, he promised that he would be the father of his children. To those who demanded attention, he gave it. He invited to dinner, gave gifts, organized romantic evenings. He was always attentive to all the details.

He was not too handsome -1.80, his eyes clear, his most striking features- and we remember him mediocre at the time of love. But i loved them. This is how he managed to enter their homes, their beds, their families. He knew his parents and his children. He befriended his friends.

“He had two phones, both prepaid, and he never let me go near them,” recalls one of his victims. He always paid in cash: he carried a grotesque wad of 50 euro bills. He also liked slot machines.

In 2008, it was tried in Ourense Accused by a girlfriend whom he had met by chat and whom he had convinced to invest in a bogus tourism agency.

However, that did not stop him from continuing to travel the country, stopping at luxury hotels and abusing the money he took from women who seduced on the internet.

Later in Soraluze, in the province of Guipúzcoa, he cheated on his new girlfriend, his in-laws and several friends with thousands of euros. When they were no longer a couple, she managed to open a briefcase that he kept always closed. There he discovered the scammer’s real name and a CD with files of the women he intended to cheat.

He fled to Zaragoza. The same story. But, all-powerful and believing himself unpunished, left some loose ends. He was imprisoned in lava and later in Burgos. But he ran away. And he went back to his old ways.

Barcelona and the end

Still in jail never left his company. During his semi-release, he assured his partners that he was a maritime rescue sergeant, thus justifying his forced return to prison.

And in one of the outings that I was allowed, never came back. The authorities also did not go to great lengths to locate him. “What was a man fleeing from justice going to do, without the possibility of reintegrating into society, that the only thing he knew how to do was be there?” Sánchez wonders in the book. Unfortunately, there is an answer: a lot.

The case first became known to the media in 2017 when a young woman reported it in Barcelona. They had met a few days ago and he He had stolen 800 euros under the pretext of making a trip together.

Cape Town Mossos d’Esquadra who took the complaint saw her shake. At this moment he understood dangerous it was that this man was at large. With two other agents, they decided to follow his trail.

They arrested him on March 11. He was driving his BMW. He didn’t resist when they called him by his real name. Eventually, his plans and lies had been dismantled.

Perverse manipulation

There were at least 50 victims. The calculations speak of around 3 million euros. But there were surely more. No more seduced, deceived and abandoned women. And more money.

“I quickly understood that he was not an ordinary guy: he was a great manipulator, a huge seducer with a brutal nose, but he was also a true predator that it did a lot of damage, ”said Sánchez Spanish.

In David’s shoes, Gómez Manzanares he destroyed the women he fell in love with. His passage in their life was devastating. He canceled them. The scammed not only economically but emotionally.

–What did you see in my eyes?asked one of his victims when he learned the truth

–Sadness, loneliness, he has answered

–But was it all a lie? Haven’t you ever felt anything?

–No, I didn’t feel anything. Like you

This dialogue reveals the coldness with which he acted. How he devastated their lives without the slightest hint of guilt.

“While discussing with his victims, I realized that the sentimental scams, contrary to what people believe, is something very serious: it is not a nice singer of the morning, it is a person that leaves authentic. emotional corpses“, added the journalist.

Shrouded in indescribable pain, many of the women who fell between his clutches did not want to speak. It is in addition to the sorry feeling of knowing that we have been cheated shame, the harsh foreign gaze that condemns them simply for believing it. As if falling into their clutches had been his fault.

Critic of how the media approached the case at the time, Sánchez maintains that Gómez Manzanares is not just a Don Juan as they presented him. “He’s not a Casanova, because he doesn’t like women: he hates them“, He rocks.

Today, he is serving his sentence at the Nanclares de Oca penitentiary center. He will be there until 2030. Everyone who knows him, including his victims, is convinced that when he comes out will cheat again.