Love brings down walls and is even able to overcome the resistance of a branch manager and a police officer. Rafa and Ana were a couple. Rafa was an agent of the Mossos and Ana was the director of a branch that Banc Santander has in the municipality of Palau Solità and Plegamans, in Vallès Oriental. In 2017, in the company of another couple with whom they went to dance lessons, they came up with a plan: they would attack the bank where Ana worked, taking advantage of a moment when she was alone. The director would feign shock, surprise and fear. They would threaten him, open the safe and take the money. It looked like a plan without apparent cracks, but the Mossos d'Esquadra caught them.
The Barcelona Court has left Ana, her boyfriend Rafa and the other couple on the verge of a trial in which they face a sentence of six years in prison. The Director of Public Prosecutions considers her the author of a crime of feigning crime and misappropriation and her boyfriend and the other couple as necessary collaborators. This is stated in the documentation to which La Vanguardia has had access.
August 4, 2017 was Friday. The director had requested a worker to reinforce the shift during the working day. There were two employees at the branch. At 3.30pm, the director's companion finished work. The director accompanied her to the door to wish her a good weekend and put up the shelf to indicate that the organization was now closed. At that moment, a hooded man bypassed the door lock, grabbed the headmistress by the neck, threw her to the ground and intimidated her into entering the code that gave access to the safe. The robber was dressed in a wig, false beard and sunglasses.
After waiting for the delay system, which prevents the door from opening immediately, and after enduring the threats uttered by the robber - "if you cooperate, nothing will happen to you, if you don't I'll shoot you" - the director of the entity agreed to take the money and put it in a suitcase. In total, 139,656 euros.
The robbery would have succeeded if it weren't for the fact that the robber fled in a white van whose license plate was captured by a security camera. This was the first thread to be pulled. The vehicle was in the name of Mireia C. whose partner was José Luís C. who had a height and physique similar to that of the robber. Moreover, the Mossos robbery experts, when viewing the images from the bank's surveillance cameras, warned that the branch manager's behavior was not logical. His way of reacting to a robbery, the facilities, the little opposition were suspicious.
Alibis that a priori seemed indestructible became porous to suspicion. The request of a backup worker made it easy for the director to be at the door at the time she was assaulted. Investigators' doubts were dispelled when they discovered that the headmistress and the alleged robbers knew each other from dance classes. The director attended with her partner, a police officer. The magnifying glass was also placed on the agent. The investigation managed to tie heads. The cop was involved in illegal card games and incurred a debt. During those times he met José Luís, a Peruvian with whom he befriended and whom he invited to go to dance classes with his wife until the two couples allegedly devised the plan to rob the bank.
The police once connected the two couples, intercepted their phone and detected conversations between the police and the director in which they referred to the other as "the robbers". The police asked for a warrant and the four suspects were arrested. The search that was carried out in their homes also bore fruit. At the home of the director and the robbers, the police found 52,639 euros in cash. The cop was considered the mastermind of the operation.
