The National Police has dismantled an organization that stole vehicles in Bulgaria, falsified the documents and later sold them in Spain. The agents have seized ten cars in Madrid and Catalonia valued at around 350,000 euros.
The National Police reported this morning that seven people of Bulgarian origin who obtained between 30,000 and 40,000 euros from the sale of each vehicle have been arrested.
The investigation began last December when the agents received information from the Interior Attaché of the Bulgarian Embassy in Spain, which reported on the existence in the Spanish automobile fleet of vehicles that had been stolen in Bulgaria, although their origin It seemed legal.
Thanks to the close international collaboration and the investigations of the agents, it was possible to verify the existence of a criminal organization of Bulgarian origin, highly specialized, dedicated to the theft of vehicles in their country of origin and their export to Spain, after altering their documents. identification.
The ‘modus operandi’ of this organization consisted of the theft of new medium-high range vehicles in Bulgaria, for which they used technological tools that allowed them to seize practically any car in less than a minute.
Subsequently, the members of the organization gave the vehicles a new identity, for which they manipulated all the identifying elements such as the chassis number, manufacturer’s labels and even the digital records of the vehicle.
In parallel, they prepared false documentation for the car using original documentary supports stolen in other countries such as Austria, on which false data was recorded.
Once the vehicles had a new identity, they were registered again in Bulgaria, as if it were a car exported from a third country, and transported to Spain, where the organization had a logistics branch in charge of registering the vehicles and introducing them into the market as used vehicles.
Due to the professionalism of the manipulations, the cars went unnoticed in all the technical controls carried out during the different registration processes to the point that some vehicles were purchased by important dealers, dedicated to the sale of used vehicles nationwide, which They did not detect the scam.