The National Police has linked the gang of Albanian origin that allegedly committed the millionaire robbery of Italian footballer Marco Verratti while he was enjoying a few days of vacation in Ibiza with 15 other robberies in luxury homes, occupied by celebrities or big businessmen, for example in Alicante.
The thieves used elements of disguise to hide themselves and sophisticated transmission equipment, as well as high-capacity vehicles for the escapes.
In total, as reported by the National Police, there are seven people arrested belonging to a criminal network of Albanian origin who allegedly had just committed a robbery in a villa in Ibiza occupied by Verratti and his wife in which they seized luxury watches and jewelry worth about three million euros. The other robberies were committed in the provinces of Alicante, Malaga and Murcia.
The first two arrests were made in Alicante, where the stolen property was seized from the home hidden in hidden compartments of the vehicle in which they were traveling. Three searches were carried out in the province of Malaga and in Ibiza, where other stolen goods were found in luxury homes.
ROBBERIES SINCE 2021
The investigation began at the end of 2021, when several robberies were detected inside luxury villas inhabited on the Costa del Sol, Murcia and Ibiza during dates such as New Year's Eve and New Year's Eve. During the robberies, the victims' property worth 300,000 euros was seized.
The dismantled organization was based in Albania, from where they moved to our country for the time necessary to commit the assaults in the selected homes. The agents were able to determine that the organization chose the homes of big businessmen or famous people to commit the robberies and that they had documents with the selected homes in exclusive areas throughout the country.
They have also been able to detect, according to the Police, that prior to the commission of the robberies they visited the villas to detect the security measures that the houses had, as well as the conditions of access to the place. During the robberies, which usually began by scaling the perimeter walls of the houses, they used disguises to hide themselves and sophisticated transmission equipment to communicate among the participants in the criminal actions.
Investigations revealed that the vehicles used were rented and that they were selected according to their power, subsequently changing the license plates for other models of the same characteristics and deactivating the geographic positioning systems as a security measure.
COUPLE IN MALAGA IN CHARGE OF LOGISTICS
The agents managed to locate a married couple living in Malaga, who maintained strong ties with members of the criminal organization and who carried out all the logistical tasks needed to commit the assaults, providing vehicles, money, accommodation and detecting houses to commit the assaults.
At a certain point in the investigation, the agents detected that those responsible for the organization visited the cities of Malaga, Barcelona and Ibiza on the same day, which led them to suspect that they might be studying the possibility of committing some of their criminal actions.
After learning on June 28 that members of the criminal network could be traveling by ferry from the island of Ibiza to the Malaga municipality of Denia, a surveillance device was set up in the port and they realized that a robbery had just been committed in a luxury villa occupied by Verratti, a Paris Saint Germain player.
As soon as they detected the presence of the suspects, the agents intercepted the vehicle and two alleged members of the organization, being able to locate in the passenger's airbag compartment several of the luxury watches stolen in the robbery that had apparently been carried out in Ibiza.
After the arrest of these two members of the criminal network, the agents located the other five members of the organization in the province of Malaga. Once arrested, two house searches were carried out in the Malaga municipalities of Valle-Niza and Chilches, as well as another one in Ibiza, during which effects were seized that allegedly incriminated those arrested in another 15 luxury home robberies: nine in the province of Malaga, four in Murcian municipalities and two in the Alicante towns of Pilar de la Horadada and Torremolinos.
The judge on duty in Denia (Alicante) agreed on July 1 to place the two men arrested in this town in provisional prison without bail for their alleged connection with the millionaire robbery of the footballer Marco, as confirmed to Europa Press by sources familiar with the decision.