2023-12-04 21:02:22
It has been called Operation Deluxe because of the obsession of this group of thieves with luxury clothing and accessory stores. The investigators of the Mossos d’Esquadra chose Deluxe for the very expensive price of some clothes that some regular collaborators of the program used to wear Sálvame Deluxe. The origins of this group of thieves are not far from the Telecinco studios, north of Madrid. They are from the south of the Spanish capital, from the neighborhoods of Getafe and Leganés, the historical epicenter of gangsaluniceros, dedicated to embedding vehicles against storefronts to be able to attack shops. These guys (they are between 23 and 35 years old) have grown up watching casts, but they have evolved to survive in the world of crime. The police consider them “the third generation ofaluniceros”.
They retain some techniques from the more veterans, such as stealing high displacement cars to commit thefts miles and miles away. Also driving at night and committing several robberies en route without stopping. An example: they left Madrid and robbed Pamplona, Zaragoza, Barcelona and Valencia. Without sleep, they returned to Madrid with all the loot. After a few hours, he was back. Sometimes they slept halfway, in an Airbnb or at an acquaintance’s house. But they don’t just ram vehicles into storefronts anymore. “They’ve evolved theirs mode of operation“, describes sub-inspector Isidoro Barbero, deputy head of the Central Multi-Recidivist Unit of the Mossos.
On October 27 of last year, the Dior store on Passeig de Gràcia in Barcelona was protected from the aluniceros. Bollards had been installed so that no car could be pushed into the shop window. This group of thieves, however, forced the door through which the store workers enter and disabled the alarm. Then, they start the timer: “They give themselves three minutes to take everything they can,” says Barbero.
‘Wheel’ i ‘Mozzarella’
350,000 euros in luxury accessories were taken from the Dior store. Four months later, on January 27, it was the turn of the Prada store, just two minutes’ walk from the Dior store. By then, the Mossos already had them moderately under control and were waiting for another robbery in the same area. And they stuck them in the dough with their hands. They arrested two people, but the criminal group was still not completely dismantled. The Deluxe case wouldn’t be complete without the Wheel operation, this time in reference to the high displacement cars that are usually used in robberies. At the end of 2022, the Mossos, together with the Civil Guard, arrested six people for 11 embezzlements, five of which were in Catalonia. They also came from around the aluniceros of Madrid and this operation opened two new lines of investigation to the Mossos and the Spanish police. One culminated last May, when 14 people were arrested in Operation Mozzarella. Some names were repeated from the Wheel case, and they were aluniceros that they had evolved: they would place an explosive device in an ATM (like putting a pizza in an oven) to blow it up and steal all the money.
A name was repeated in two operations and the investigators were able to link it to the robbery of the Dior store in Passeig de Gràcia. “It was the nexus between the three cases,” says Barbero. At the beginning of 2023 he was in pre-trial detention for previous robberies, but it was necessary to identify some members who accompanied him in this hit. Some of the members, in fact, were not aluniceros usual “He made signings,” explains the police sub-inspector. The core of the group were two people in their thirties who had ties to those arrested in the Wheel and Mozzarella case. To rob the Dior store, however, they needed to innovate, forcing locks and disabling alarms, and they enlisted some experts in these matters. “Satellites are being added to the cores,” adds the police investigator. The Mossos already arrested two people in the failed robbery at the Prada store, but last June the leader was released from prison (within a few days he was arrested again for a robbery in Pineda de Mar) and still needed to be caught a few members of the group.
In November of this year, they had everything ready to go to Madrid and arrest them. D-day was November 28. A week before, on the 23rd of the same month, a coincidence gave them the definitive confirmation. A vehicle was driving along Diagonal, near Paseo de Gràcia, around nine o’clock at night. He invaded a lane he was not touching and the Urban Guard stopped him. Inside was “the core” of the band. They were caught together, near their favorite street and with many burglary tools in the car. They had become so specialized that they carried signal jammers in the car so they wouldn’t listen to their conversations. Five days later they would end up arrested for the robbery of the Dior store along with two other members of the gang. The Mossos calculate that between the two robberies (the one at Dior and the failed one at Prada) nine people participated and three have yet to be caught. For this reason, the investigation remains open, also to link them with other robberies. In 2022, for example, there were eight similar luxury stores located in Catalonia.
Robbery by a group of thieves at a cash machine in Sant Boi de Llobregat last September using the ‘pizza slide’ technique
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