The robbery of a deliveryman in Malaga that caused the fall of two criminal organizations | Spain
Everything started with a kidnapping. The employee of a parcel company circulated with his van by Cártama (Malaga28,934 inhabitants) when some strangers forced him to stop at gunpoint. They took him to an area away from the town and, there, registered his merchandise. Surprised, the man saw that they did not get practically anything. They had only taken some packages from the interior of freezers who had a destination to Germany and, with them under their arm, fled. In his statement he said that they carried caps and that one of them, of advanced age, carried a wig of a brilliant blond. « It was a clear drug turnaround, » says one of the agents of the National Police that has directed the complex investigation that, from that event, has allowed to dismantle two drug traffickers organizations based in Malaga and detain its ten members, of which seven remain in prison. 1,700 marijuana plants, 600 kilograms of buds, 11 surveillance drones and three weapons, one of them of war.
The work of this operation, called Wilson and whose details have been announced this Friday, was developed for just over a year and did so through two parallel paths. The first focused on knowing who had assaulted the deliveryman. It was not easy, but the reconstruction of the route made by the van used by the drug traffickers before and after the kidnapping was key. First, the agents found out that the vehicle was stolen and had folded registrations. Then they managed to identify their driver. It was a surprise: it was a historic French drug trafficker who has been based on the Costa del Sol. At 72 years they consist of numerous background and several arrests, most of the majority for stealing drugs to other criminal organizations and for their relationship with the weapons of war.
It is believed that he exercised from leader because he possessed the information where there could be drug hides to attack. And that he had recruited other men, younger, for the robberies, in which he always was behind the wheel. The agents gradually know the names of those around him. Among them was a helicopter pilot arrested in 2018 for transporting drugs in this type of aircraft and that, it is believed, has done it again recently. There was also a drone specialist, who had cameras to pilot the devices as if he traveled in them. Everyone followed the leader, to which police sources consider « very thrown forward » and that in the criminal world they consider « easy trigger. »
They, along with other cronies, made different attempts in the following months to materialize dumps in Marbella and their surroundings. Until at the end of September last year, when criminals had everything scheduled to assault a nursery with 3,000 kilos of hashish in the town of Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cádiz), the police were surprised in the street. In Benalmádena, where they resided, they stopped their car and in it a shotgun and an automatic weapon were found, considered of war. There were also false police plates, Slewfalls (flashing lights used in police vehicles), balaclavas, wives or GPS. « They missed police for their robberies, » explains an agent. « It was a ‘Kit of ‘complete ”dumps, says another researcher. They also found the blonde wig and masks such as those used by the Anonymous collective.
From all the intervened material, the operation continued with a new phase in which, already in November, four more arrests were made and five other records in Fuengirola, Mijas and the city of Malaga. In total, 400 cartridges have been seized —70 of them of war – and a rifle, in addition to 11 drones – it is believed that to monitor the places to assault – artisanally prepared with a 3D printer to avoid serial numbers or possible police seizures. Also false license plates and 35,000 euros in cash. The seven detainees were sent to prison by the judge, although three of them are already on bail.
Electric thermos full of marijuana
The second route of research was focused on finding out who had sent those freezers full of what was known to be a narcotic substance, although at the beginning it was not known which one. The first step was to verify that what names were the beans and it was soon confirmed that they were those of third parties to whom they had stolen their documentation. Without their consent, they appeared as authors of numerous shipments to several European countries through different parcel companies. Little by little they managed to reach the people behind those names: it was a Spanish family group based in the Axarquía region (east of Malaga) who made frequent shipments to Germany.
The police let them act until one of those portes could intervene, composed of two thermos inside whose interior there were 10 kilos of marijuana buds in each. Both had a GPS installed to always have your location. The investigation has also allowed to determine that in recent months they had made 17 shipments, all to different parts of Germany.
From there, the agents made the arrest of three people and made different records In the towns of Vélez-Málaga, Torrox and Cártama. After their judicial provision, they were sent to provisional prison. In their homes and farms, 1,765 marijuana plants were found in different growth phases and 600 kilos of clothing ready to send: some were their own production and others acquired to small and medium suppliers of the axarchical zone. Stolen documentation was also found – with which they made the shipments – as well as an accounting notebook, two GPS beacons and 13,000 euros in cash, as well as two vehicles.
