Mobile call on whereabouts of Maddie exposed as a hoax

HOPES of a breakthrough in the search for Madeleine McCann have been dashed by the news that a potentially significant phone call received last week was a hoax.

The call to Spanish police, received from an Argentinian pay-as-you-go mobile phone, claimed to know where Madeleine was.

It was deemed so significant that Madeleine’s parents Gerry and Kate McCann suspended their search of Europe.

They delayed flying from Berlin to Amsterdam by three hours and even considered going back to Britain to speak to specialists about the caller. However, he was dismissed as a professional thief from Cordoba in Argentina. It emerged he had asked the couple for $1 million for the information. A source close to the family said: “He was dismissed as a conman who was just trying it on basically.”

In Argentina, a police source said the caller was not sophisticated enough to carry out the abduction.

They told the daily La Nacion paper: “The author of the calls is a professional thief. He demanded $1m for information on the whereabouts of the missing girl.

“Though he is a professional thief, neither he nor any of his gang would have the infrastructure necessary for a kidnap of this kind or to hide a girl sought by police in Portugal, Spain and Great Britain.”

With no new breakthrough, Mr and Ms McCann embarked on the last of their visits to other countries to raise the profile of Madeleine’s case.

They travelled to the Moroccan capital of Rabat last night for a series of meetings and a news conference to appeal for information. The north African country has repeatedly surfaced in the hunt for their daughter, with a sighting of a young girl at a petrol station in Marrakesh.

Mari Pollard said she saw a small blonde girl on May 9 – six days after Madeleine was taken – with a man who did not look like her father, asking to see her mother.

Mrs Pollard, a Norwegian who lives in Spain with her English husband, Ray, said the Spanish, Portuguese and British were not initially interested in what she had seen. She said she gave a description to police but has yet to be interviewed face to face. She saw the little girl as she returned from a week-long holiday in Marrakesh.

Morocco is 35 minutes from Spain by ferry and Ms McCann, aged 38, was particularly keen to go there. She said she felt its proximity to Spain and Portugal made it an important place to visit.

After weeks of exhaustive media coverage and high-profile appeals, the couple plan to take a step back next week to give themselves time to grieve.

The couple plan to stay in the Algarve at least until the end of the summer or until Madeleine is found.