Footage released from the authorities shows the arrest in the town of Molina de Segura, in the Spanish region of Murcia, in June, with the images released on 11th August.
The 35-year-old suspect, not named, is accused of sitting in front of a webcam holding a forged national identity card while software remodelled his features in real time to match the photograph on the document.
Officers say he made 38 attempts to obtain electronic certificates in the names of more than 30 real citizens.
To beat the checks, he allegedly built a homemade rig of household lamps fitted with coloured bulbs, so that tilting the fake card towards the camera threw off flashes resembling the holograms on genuine paperwork.
Investigators say he also relied on VPN connections and SIM swapping, with more than 320 phone lines traced to 24 handsets, most of them registered using stolen identities and bought in Murcia.
Sources close to the investigation said: “He started with some very crude attempts in which even the watermark of the technology he was using appeared, but in the end he managed to greatly perfect the system and fool the automated system.”
The scheme came apart when the program transforming his features lagged and the digital mask vanished on camera.
The same sources said: “It was just one second, enough for his real face to appear in two frames and for our colleagues in the Scientific Police to carry out a study of his physiognomy so that we could fully identify him.”
The suspect reportedly used a free version of an AI tool of Russian origin, and police believe it is the first time the method has been detected in Spain.
He was already known to officers for renting cars and selling them abroad, as well as for carding, the illegal use of other people’s card details.
The aim was reportedly to secure valid digital signatures and then open bank accounts, request loans and take out mobile contracts in other people’s names.
He was arrested on suspicion of a continuous offence of forgery of an official document, with an encrypted laptop, phones, storage devices and documents seized from his home.