Benidorm hotel room burglar busted

NATIONAL Police officers have arrested a 47-year-old Spanish man and accused him of carrying out various burglaries in the guests’ rooms at the hotel he was working at.

A National Police investigation kicked off when police received reports of various rooms in the same hotel being burgled. In all the cases, cash went missing from the safe deposit boxes.

Because the modus operandi was identical in all the burglaries, officers quickly concluded that an employee could be the person responsible and decided to follow this line of enquiry.

In all the reports received, neither the doors nor the safes were forced, meaning that the culprit was accessing the rooms with a false key. After checking the register of the opening times of the doors and safes, and carrying out a thorough investigation, offices identified the burglar as being a maintenance technician who worked at the hotel.

In the majority of burglaries, the culprit alerted guests and pretended there was a problem in their rooms, so they would let him in. Once inside, the technician instructed them to reset the code on the safe deposit box, which they did in front of him.

Later, when the room was empty, the technician would return, accessing the room with his own key card, then using the code he had seen the guests tap in, he would open the safes and steal the money inside.

On some occasions, the culprit would access rooms using another employee’s card after saying that he had lost his own.

The burglar was arrested on October 16, allowing police to solve three burglary reports. The arrested man had 18 priors for similar offences.