Agents of the National Police have dismantled an itinerant criminal group specialized in committing robberies with violence and “amorous” thefts in the provinces of Murcia and Alicante and have arrested its four members. Those arrested committed this type of crime on elderly people, taking advantage of distractions, hugs or sexual offers to steal the jewelry or watches they were wearing.
The first investigations began last January, when the agents learned of a robbery with violence in which the perpetrators had used the “loving embrace” technique to steal a high-end watch from an elderly man.
In her complaint, the victim told the agents that, while she was preparing to enter the garage of her home, a young woman approached her to the window of her vehicle and proposed to have sexual relations.
The man, not knowing this woman at all and not understanding her behavior, began to get upset and, immediately afterwards, two more people appeared, a man and another woman who, after grabbing him by the wrist, began to struggle with him until they were able to reach him. snatch the watch he was wearing.
After the theft, the three people fled aboard a vehicle, being chased by the victim through various streets until he finally lost sight of them.
With the information and characteristics provided by the victim in relation to these people and the vehicle used to commit the acts, the agents began an investigation in which the perpetrators were linked to other criminal acts committed in different parts of the territory. national.
According to the same sources, it was a perfectly organized family clan, with great geographical mobility and distribution of functions, whose criminal specialty was based on the commission of what were known as “amorous” thefts, where they approached elderly people with offers. sexually or pretending to know them and giving them hugs to see what valuable objects they were carrying and stealing them.
The objects they sought to steal were always jewelry, both gold chains with their pendants, and high-end and highly valuable watches acting as a couple, with the women being the ones who got out of the vehicles to commit the criminal acts in person while the men They remained waiting inside the vehicles to facilitate a quick escape after the robbery was committed or even collaborated in case the victim became aware of the theft, not hesitating to use violence on them in order to seize the vehicle. of valuables.
As the investigation advanced, the agents found out that the members of the family clan rented homes far from the urban area to go unnoticed, from which they moved to nearby towns to look for potential victims, always elderly people, making reservations for the accommodations in their names. of other people who did not have a police record so as not to be detected by the police.
As for the trips, they made them in vehicles that they acquired using documentation from third parties who had no relationship with them, including names of people who had already died, changing vehicles very frequently in order to make police work more difficult.
Regarding the stolen effects, they were jewelry and watches of great value, which were subsequently sold by other members of the organization to recipients with whom they had contact, so as not to be detected in the legal market.
After analyzing all the efforts aimed at clarifying the facts, the investigators located one of the vehicles used to commit the crimes and, after carrying out various surveillance and monitoring, they managed to identify two of the members of the family clan who were arrested near the Alicante town. by Pilar de la Horadada.
These first arrests took the agents to the Murcian district of Aljucer, where the members of the clan had rented a house that was usually used by them to stay and from where they traveled to localities in the area in search of possible victims.
Around said address, the agents established a device with which the arrest of two more people was obtained, a man and a woman, members of the same criminal network. After the arrests, a search was carried out at the home where various jewelry, high-end mobile phones and cash were seized.
With these arrests, it has been possible to clarify four criminal acts with the same characteristics that occurred in the towns of Monóvar (Alicante), El Algar (Murcia) and Los Alcázares (Murcia), places where the detainees committed the acts using the same modus operandi of theft. “loving”.
In total, there were four people arrested, two men and two women, of Romanian nationality, between 28 and 31 years of age, all of them with a multitude of records for similar events.
All were placed at the disposal of the Investigative Courts of Orihuela and Murcia, decreeing the imprisonment of two of the detainees, one of them being the ringleader of the plot and one of the detained women, both of whom had been two of the authors of the plot. robbery that gave rise to the investigation.
The investigation has been carried out by the Specialized Crime Group of the Judicial Police Brigade of the Alicante Provincial Police Station, participating and supporting the transfer of the detainees, Citizen Security agents from the Orihuela National Police Station and the Superior Headquarters of Murcia.
For their part, the agents continue with the investigations in relation to locating more possible victims, not ruling out the arrest of more members of the criminal organization.
