Love breaks down walls and is even capable of breaking the resistance of a mosso d’esquadra and the director of a bank office. Rafa and Ana were a couple. Rafa was an agent of the Mossos and Ana was the director of the branch that Banco Santander had in the municipality of Palau Solità i Plegamans, in Vallès Occidental. In 2017, in the company of another couple with whom they were going to dance classes, they devised a plan: they would rob the bank where Ana worked, taking advantage of a moment when she was alone.
The director would feign a start, fear. They would threaten her, open the safe and take the money. It seemed like a plan without apparent fissures, but the Mossos d’Esquadra discovered 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, the Prosecutor’s Office considers her the author of a crime of simulation of crime and misappropriation, and her boyfriend and her other couple, necessary cooperators. 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. They were two employees at the branch. At 3:30 p.m., the director’s companion finished work. The director accompanied her to her door to wish her a good weekend and activate the latch to indicate that the entity was now closed. At that moment, a hooded man avoided blocking the door, led the director by grabbing her by the neck, threw her to the ground and intimidated her into entering the code that gave access to the safe. The robber was disguised with a wig, false beard and sunglasses.
After waiting for the delay system, which prevents the door from opening immediately, and after enduring the threats made by the robber – “if you cooperate, nothing will happen to you, if not, I will 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 were not for the fact that the robber fled with a white van whose license plate was captured by a security camera. That was the first thread to pull. The vehicle was in the name of Mireia C., whose partner was José Luis C. who was similar in height and physique to those of the robber. Furthermore, the Mossos experts in robberies, when viewing the images from the bank’s surveillance cameras, warned that the behavior of the branch director was not logical. Her way of reacting to a robbery, the facilities, the little opposition, were suspicious.
Alibis that a priori seemed indestructible became porous to suspicions. The request of a reinforcement worker whom she accompanied made it easier for the director to find herself at the door. The doubts of the investigators were dispelled when they discovered that the director and the alleged robbers knew each other from dance classes.
The director attended with her partner, a mosso d’esquadra. The magnifying glass was also placed on the agent. The investigation managed to connect the dots. The mosso participated in illegal card games and contracted a debt. In those timbas he met José Luis, a Peruvian with whom he became friends and whom he invited to go to dance classes with his wife until the two couples allegedly devised to carry out the plan to rob the bank.
Once the Mossos connected the two couples, they tapped their phones and detected conversations between the mosso and the director in which they referred to the other as “the robbers”. The police officers requested authorization and the four suspects were arrested. The search that was carried out in their homes also paid off. At the home of the director and the robbers, the police found 52,639 euros in cash. The mosso was considered the brain of the operation.
