Agents of the National Police have dismantled a criminal group dedicated to vehicle theft and license plate falsification that is responsible for twenty robberies in companies in Madrid, Segovia and Valencia, the Madrid Police Headquarters reported in a statement.
In the police operation, the eight members of the criminal network have been arrested and during the searches, seven firearms, a machine for cutting license plates and a hundred 'clean license plates', among other items, which were hidden in refrigerators buried in a rural farm.
A total of 21 criminal actions are attributed to them, including a robbery in a warehouse in Humanes (Madrid) of sneakers worth 600,000 euros and another of oil and other effects in a company in Manises (Valencia) worth more of 23,000 euros.
The investigation began at the end of last December after a robbery was committed in a supermarket in the Madrid town of Rivas - Vaciamadrid.
The agents managed to relate this fact to other crimes committed in the provinces of Segovia and Valencia, observing that in all of them previously stolen vehicles were used whose original license plates had been replaced with false ones, made by themselves, with the in order to make police work more difficult.
Among the most notable events attributed to this criminal group, a robbery with force committed in a company in the Madrid town of Humanes (Madrid) last March stands out.
In this case, through a hole made in the ceiling, these individuals managed to steal around 2,000 pairs of sneakers valued at 600,000 euros.
Likewise, just two weeks later, in an industrial warehouse in Manises (Valencia), they acted again, cutting the sheet metal of the exterior cover and appropriating food products, oil bottles and cosmetic items valued at more than 23,000 euros.
In the case of Valencia, the members of the criminal group fled in a van that they had previously stolen near the company.
A circumstance that is representative of the modus operandi used by these individuals, since they used these vehicles and stolen high-end passenger cars, to commit illicit actions and flee the scene.
They then moved to a farm located on the outskirts of Madrid where they temporarily hid the merchandise before releasing it onto the illicit market through a network of recipients.
The progress of the investigation allowed the identification of the eight members of the criminal group, all of them men, with six simultaneous searches being carried out in their respective homes on April 26, followed by their arrest as alleged perpetrators of 21 criminal offenses - five robberies with force, seven vehicle thefts, five falsifications of official documents, one crime of damage, illicit possession of firearms and membership in a criminal group.
The day after being arrested, a seventh search was carried out in the aforementioned Madrid property that they used as a warehouse for the stolen merchandise. There, seven firearms and abundant ammunition, a license plate cutting machine and a hundred blank plates, as well as instruments to commit the robberies, such as frequency inhibitors to violate the systems, were located buried and hidden in disused appliances. alarm or oxy-cutting groups to open armored boxes.
In addition, the agents found geolocation devices, balaclavas, masks and vests similar to those used by the Security Forces and Corps, instruments commonly used to commit robberies with violence and intimidation of other criminal organizations, commonly known as 'overturns'.
For this reason, investigators are currently carrying out investigations to verify whether these intervened effects have been used in other criminal acts. Due to these events, the eight detainees were placed at the disposal of the judicial authority, who ordered the imprisonment of four of them.
