Why can’t we stop convicted criminals flying in from Chile to go on burglary rampages across the home counties?
RETURNING to their £1 million house in the Home Counties, the family of four discovered the rear patio doors forced open and the property ransacked.
‘all my clothes were everywhere,’ said the homeowner, still so rattled by last summer’s burglary she asked not to be identified.
‘The mattresses and pillows had been taken up, my make-up cases had been rifled through. We had three metal safes all broken into. They had stolen £1,000 in cash as well as a camera, laptop and Bose speakers.’
Worse still was the theft of items of sentimental value. These included a necklace and bracelet bought by her businessman husband for her 50th birthday and a gold watch presented to his grandfather for saving a woman drowning in a Manchester canal.
‘He ended up marrying her and she became my husband’s grandma,’ she said. ‘The watch was passed down to him and would have been passed down to our son.’
Most baffling of all, though, was the thieves’ approach to a valuable collection of football memorabilia. Of three shirts, only one had been left behind — the england one. a Brazilian shirt had been taken as had a signed Liverpool one bearing the name of Uruguayan ace Luis Suarez.
Months later, when police arrested one of the burglars, the reasons behind their shirt selection became clear. ‘We got a call from a detective last November telling us they had got him,’ said the woman, whose six-bedroom house is near Sevenoaks, Kent.
‘He told us the man was from Chile and part of a South american gang. apparently they get flown over here — eight or nine at a time — then burgle as many houses as they can before they fly back. It’s rich pickings for them. We are seen as easy targets.’
But how? This week, it emerged more than 75 Chilean burglars have been arrested in the past two years in some 200 burglaries in London, essex, Kent, Surrey, Hertfordshire, Oxfordshire, the South-West and Wales.
almost half the arrests have been by the Metropolitan Police. Jewellery, watches and designer clothes worth millions of pounds have been stolen with the intention of shipping them back to South america.
Detectives believe the ‘burglary tourists’ are not acting alone and that their activities are being co- ordinated by a ‘ Mr Big’ in South London. all those arrested pleaded guilty at once — and every single one has refused to comment in interviews with police.
Questions are now being asked as to how these individuals were allowed into the UK.
The Mail can reveal that many have criminal records for robbery, burglary and other crimes in Chile and elsewhere in the world.
at least one was known to Interpol, having previously been deported from Spain for a similar crime. another had been deported from Italy and Holland just two years before flying into Britain.
Yet still they were allowed to waltz into the country and terrorise British citizens. ‘ How many more gangs from other countries are doing this?’ asked the victim from Kent. ‘ We were shocked it was an organised gang and from somewhere so far away. Why are they not being vetted? The immigration control in this country is way too lax.’
She added: ‘It’s a horrible feeling to have someone go through your stuff. We feel we have been violated. Our space was invaded. We hope we can warn others to be aware.’
But while the family has fortified their home with CCTV cameras and alarms, the fear is that even those measures will not put off these wellorganised foreign gangs. They aim to be in and out of the country in weeks — Chileans do not need visas to enter the UK for visits of up to six months if here as a tourist — so whatever clues they leave, they hope to be home before they can be traced.
They also select their victims carefully. Detectives from the Met noticed a trend at the end of last year of burglaries of large properties near golf courses and parkland in southwest London and Surrey.
The houses would almost always be empty when broken into and access would be gained at the first floor. Once inside, the thieves would steal high-value items such as designer clothes, handbags, jewellery and watches. ‘ This was really sophisticated targeting,’ said Detective Inspector Tim Court.
‘The burglaries were all similar, with access gained to the first floor of the property using furniture found in the garden such as tables, chairs and ladders. This ensured that alarm systems, which only covered the ground floor, were not triggered.’
HeSaID the approach was the ‘ signature’ of this particular group of Chileans and helped his officers to identify dozens of linked crimes.
Using automatic number- plate recognition technology, they were able to identify vehicles in the vicinity of the properties at the time of the burglaries. From this, they identified the burglars’ cars, noting that after thefts the crooks tended to converge in South London, where they believe the gang leaders are.
It is thought that when the Chileans arrive in the country they hand over their identification papers and are given a car and mobile phone, before being directed to homes previously identified by the gang.
In the case of the Kent burglary, a month before the raid the owner spotted a car and a moped acting strangely outside his property.
‘The man on the moped said, “That one” and pointed at our house,’ the homeowner said. ‘ They stopped at the end of the road so I followed them thinking it was peculiar, but when I got there they sped off. My theory is they were casing the house.’
Back to London where, having tracked one of the cars linked to the gang, Met detectives were able to latch on to four burglars, all recently arrived from Chile’s capital Santiago. The gang members were followed as they travelled from South London to Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire.
There, they entered the first floor of a £1.6 million property using garden furniture to help gain access.
Police equipped with dogs and supported by a helicopter arrested the men as they tried to flee with jewellery and other valuables.
alexis apablaza, 22, angelo Bustamente, 34, Javier Kurte, 24, and Gustavo ahumada-Paredes, 19, appeared at St albans Crown Court in april.
They all claimed to be of no fixed abode, made no comment in police interviews and pleaded guilty at the first opportunity. They were each jailed for two years.
Their victim, a 59-year- old dentist who was out celebrating his daughter’s graduation when they broke in, this week spoke about the ordeal for the first time, saying it had left his family feeling ‘distraught’.
‘ We thought this was a safe neighbourhood,’ he said. ‘They went upstairs in muddy boots and ransacked my and my wife’s room, my daughters’ bedrooms, pulled everything out and turned it upside down.
‘My wife had jewellery which they put in my gym bag with watches and cufflinks. every time you go into the room that was ransacked, those pictures come into your head of how it was. It has taken us six or seven months to get over it.’
The Met’s investigation, known as Operation Genie, has led to a total of 36 Chilean nationals being arrested. Sixteen have been convicted of burglary- related offences. Of the remaining 20, eight have been deported and 12 left the country after being released under investigation.
Police also intercepted a crate bound for Chile from Heathrow containing jewellery including a £100,000 Franck Muller watch. Other items recovered include dozens of handbags by Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Gucci and Chanel. There are also hundreds of items of jewellery and watches, including Tiffany necklaces, diamond rings and cufflinks.
But while the Met’s operation has undoubtedly disrupted the gang, it is understood that detectives have not yet identified its ringleader.
Come autumn — the burglars prefer to act under the cover of darkness — there are fears their activities could ramp up again.
and while much of the recent activity has been in London, in the past couple of years Chilean burglars have targeted homes across the country.
The burglar jailed for three years for his part in the raid on the Sevenoaks house — a 26-year-old called alvaro Huaiquifil Painevalu — had also taken part in a series of break-ins in essex.
Police described him as a ‘prolific burglar’ with links to an ‘ organised network responsible for countless burglaries across the South-east’.
Last July, ailin Miranda, then 22, and alfredo Rodriguez, 34, were jailed after stealing items worth £15,000 from a home in Oxford just a week after arriving from Chile. The pair,
caught after the householder raised the alarm, even stole a letter her child had written to the Tooth Fairy.
The previous month, three other men were jailed for ten months each for burgling a £1.2 million home in Caterham, Surrey: Agustin Arriagada Gaete, 26, Claudio Mejias, 36, and Isreal Pino Gonzalaez, 19, were caught as they tried to escape with money, jewellery and a 200-year-old leather-bound edition of the Bible. Neighbour Roger Smith, 47, jumped on one of the men, wrestling him to the ground and holding him until police arrived. Mr Smith told the Mail: ‘He had a foreign accent and didn’t really speak english.
‘He had a little rucksack and he was trying to get a crowbar out of it so he could hit me with it. I put his arm behind his back and laid on him until the police turned up and put handcuffs on him.’
More prolific still were the trio of 33- year- old Francisco Javier Montecinos Neira, Julio Galdamez-Rodriguez, 21, and 36-year- old Luis Alberto Villarroel.
They were jailed for a total of 21 years last September. Between them they had carried out 14 burglaries in London, Sussex, Oxfordshire and Wales.
They would smash rear windows or patio doors to gain entry during the raids, Cardiff Crown Court heard. Once inside they would steal cash and jewellery before fleeing. In total, they stole items worth £60,000.
On the day the men were finally arrested they had committed four burglaries. In mitigation, Curtis Telfer, defending Galdamez-Rodriguez, said his client was ‘unaware of the seriousness of the offending because he was unfamiliar with the laws of this country’.
In court it emerged that Villarroel — who also used aliases — was a father of four with a long criminal record in Chile for burglary, possession of weapons and drugs offences, and had been deported from Spain in 2005 for theft.
As for Neira, Chilean officials have confirmed to the Mail that he was convicted of burglary in Spain in 2009 and was deported from Italy in 2011 and 2015, the latter occasion for burglary.
That same year he was also deported from Holland. He has previous convictions for theft in Chile, where there is an outstanding warrant for his arrest, also relating to an allegation of theft.
Given that, why were Villarroel and Neira ever allowed into the UK in 2017?
A Home Office spokesman refused to comment on individual cases, but said: ‘We take the issue of preventing foreign criminals entering the UK extremely seriously and we continue to strengthen our borders so that we can prevent crime and protect the public. We carry out 100 per cent checks at passport control to identify persons of interest entering the UK.
‘Where we are made aware of foreign offending, Border Force officers can, and do, use that information to exercise their powers to refuse entry.
‘Closer working between the police and Home Office Immigration enforcement in recent years has led to the earlier identification and checking of foreign national offenders.’
OVeRin Chile, the authorities say they are doing everything they can to help British police. In the past, they admit to having had a problem with petty thieves travelling abroad. They were known as ‘ lanzas’ or pickpockets.
But now it is ‘specialist criminals’ moving abroad to commit crimes.
‘It started to change six or seven years ago,’ a police source there told the Mail.
‘These individuals had more economic resources that allowed them to travel and they realised that there was an opportunity to commit crimes in other countries that were, so to speak, “cost effective”.’
As well as targeting the UK, gangs are also active in Spain, France and Italy, he said. Police in Chile are checking to see if those involved in the burglaries were travelling on false passports or using false names.
‘They all plead guilty because they want to spend as short a time as possible in prison in Britain,’ said the source. Once released from jail, they will be deported back to Chile.
Meanwhile, police here say they will continue to work with the UK Border Agency, the Chilean embassy and europol to ‘harden our borders to this group, denying them access to the UK and preventing more people becoming victims of crime’.
Sending out a message loud and clear, one hopes, that crime doesn’t pay — in Chile or Britain.