Suspected bank robbers arrested
Gang members brandished pistols during raids in the cities of Alicante and Murcia
FIVE suspected Italian bank robbers have been detained by the National Police.
They were based in Orihuela Costa at the time of the arrests.
According to a force spokesman, they are suspected of having carried out armed raids at banks in Alicante city and Murcia in September and October. He stated that they formed part of an ‘itinerant criminal group specialised in carrying out bank robberies’.
The gang – who hail from Naples and have ‘family ties’ – changed their place of residence in Spain regularly, and moved up and down the Mediterranean coast taking in the provinces of Málaga, Murcia, Alicante and Barcelona.
“They did not hesitate to brandish firearms to intimidate employees and clients who were inside the banks,” noted the spokesman. He added that they were ‘highly professional, with great experience and perfectly coordinated’.
The police investigation started in October when an armed robbery was carried out in Murcia city.
The perpetrators made their getaway with €344,335 in cash.
Detectives found that the raid was ‘similar’ to a frustrated attempt to rob a bank in Alicante the previous month when two individuals armed with pistols were unable to escape with a heist ‘due to resistance put up by the staff and customers’.
Following an analysis of the CCTV footage from both raids and witness statements, officers confirmed that they ‘spoke Spanish with a foreign accent’ and acted in a very cool manner. After piecing together information, they were able to identify five members of the gang – and found they were staying in different hotels in Barcelona in November.
Soon afterwards they left the city and travelled to a villa they had rented in Orihuela Costa, before some of them spent Christmas on an urbanisation in Marbella.
Officers noted that the suspects were ‘living the high life’ but did not seem to be supporting themselves with legal employment. This included hiring vehicles, hotel stays, eating in expensive restaurants, and renting villas in coastal areas which cost more than €2,000 a month.
The officers deduced that they were funding their activities with the large amount of money obtained from the Murcia bank robbery.
The spokesman noted that the gang returned to the villa in Orihuela Costa in the new year. At which stage the police
were ready to move in.
The decision was taken to do this immediately when one of the women in the group travelled to Barcelona and appeared to be ready to leave the country.
The woman was arrested in Barcelona at the same time that the villa in Orihuela Costa was raided, where another of the suspects was caught.
The three remaining members were detained in a car at a toll booth on the AP-7 motorway in the municipality of Cartagena.
Searches were carried out in Orihuela, Barcelona and Marbella, where officers found glasses, hats, bags, gloves, clothing and other accessories which may have been used in the raids, along with forged identity documents.
In the Orihuela villa they discovered bundles of €100 notes amounting to €47,000.
They had been left ‘in the same way they were arranged by the bank from which they had been stolen’.
The suspects were found to have police records for robberies and other crimes in Spain, Italy and Belgium.
One of the suspects, who was using a forged Italian identification document, was wanted for homicide, robbery, kidnapping, possession of illegal weapons and causing injuries in Italy.
He had already been sentenced to 14 years in jail for some of those crimes.
That suspect and another person accused of participating in the two bank raids in Spain were remanded in custody. The investigation remains open to catch a sixth member of the gang who is believed to have taken part in the Murcia robbery.