The police knew they weren’t just pickpockets. They moved with a degree of specialization and security measures typical of organized crime. They were luxury watch thieves. But the researchers needed to prove it. That is why they asked the judge to tap their phones.
The agents patiently listened to their conversations looking for a word that would give them away. What they did not imagine was what was about to happen. One of the criminals called a buddy and began to broadcast the surveillance to which he was subjecting his target, a tourist who was returning to her hotel in Marbella at dawn. The thief did not hang up the phone correctly and the policemen, who did not believe what was happening, heard the struggle and the shouts of “police, police!” of the woman. It was the first time they heard, live, a robbery. That wiretap allowed them, two months later, to completely dismantle the gang, made up of Moroccans and Algerians. In the records they recovered seven watches. Among them was the victim’s.
The police operation was closed at the beginning of 2022, just a few months after the creation of the Rolex team, a group of national police officers attached to the Marbella police station and specialized in investigating the emerging phenomenon of luxury watch theft. “These arrests are due to a new way of working,” says Chief Inspector José María Toribio, operational manager -second in command- of the Marbella police station and also the ideologue of this unit.
The change in the way they are investigated comes hand in hand with the very evolution of this type of crime, which is primed mainly in tourist areas such as Marbella, where there can be 200 watch thefts a year, Barcelona – “it is rare the day that there is not one”, they comment in Mossos -, Ibiza, Alicante or Madrid. It is a modality associated with tourism, so it is not exclusive to Spain. Cities like Paris, Monaco, Cannes, Saint-Tropez, Rome or Milan also suffer from them. But thieves, always itinerant, have a favorite route: Mykonos-Ibiza-Marbella. And start again.
The explanation for this phenomenon must be found in the rise of a black market that arose from the lack of stock of watches due to the exclusivity of the brands and the manufacture, almost always handmade, of these units. Firms such as Rolex, Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe or Richard Mille -some of the most sought after by thieves- have a limited production that they put on sale each season. “There is a waiting list of up to 10 years for certain pieces”, clarifies Miguel Gómez, director of Gómez y Molina Joyeros and one of the five ambassadors in Spain (200 in the world) of the Fine Watchmaking Foundation, from Marbella. “This brand policy – he adds – contains negative aspects. It leads to compulsive and emotional buying: imagine that you want to give a gift because you are getting married, you go to a jewelry store and they tell you that it cannot be and that they will call you. This causes frustration in the client, who does not understand that they have to wait five years to buy a watch of 400,000 euros.
“Jewelry stores have a waiting list of up to 10 years for certain pieces because the brands put very few units on the market”
To meet this demand, criminal organizations have emerged that even have clandestine workshops to which they can take the part in case of a breakdown, since if they go to an official house they risk losing it. Luxury watches are accompanied by documentation and a serial number that make them unique in the world. «A Kuwaiti businessman bought one in the United States for 20,000 euros and, when he took it to a jewelry store for repair, they detected that he had been stolen in a robbery at a jewelry store in Alicante. He was a buyer in good faith, but he was left without the piece and without the 20,000 euros », says Gómez Molina.
The value of a loot
in one hit
Most of the stolen watches move on this fork.
In Ibiza they managed to steal a Richard Mille 50-03 McLaren F1 valued at that price
The value of a loot
in one hit
Most of the stolen watches move on this fork.
In Ibiza they managed to steal a Richard Mille 50-03 McLaren F1 valued at that price
The value of a loot
in one hit
Most of the stolen watches move on this fork.
In Ibiza they managed to steal a Richard Mille 50-03 McLaren F1 valued at that price
The value of a loot
in one hit
Most of the stolen watches move on this fork.
In Ibiza they managed to steal a Richard Mille 50-03 McLaren F1 valued at this price
Although the theft of watches began as a matter of common crime, the strength of the black market, where its price is multiplied by up to five, turns this criminal modality into a vein for organized crime. Not in vain, the loot that can be obtained in a single hit ranges between 6,000 and 400,000 euros (most of the stolen watches are in that range), although in Ibiza they managed to steal a Richard Mille 50-03 McLaren F1 valued at 1.2 million. That is why it requires a different way of combating the phenomenon. “Before, a lot of information was lost because, depending on the characteristics of the crime (theft or violent robbery) it was worked by a different police unit,” Toribio clarifies. Now, the eight members of the Rolex team -with the support of the Málaga Robbery Group- investigate all watch thefts, whatever the modality, and not only focus on chasing the thief, but on following the next links in the chain. Since its creation two years ago, it has more than 100 detainees. The jeweler praises the work of the Security Forces: “They have come to recover a watch that was stolen from us more than a decade ago.”
The counterparts of the ‘Rolex team’ in the Mossos d’Esquadra are the members (14) of the Titanium Group, which was born with the same philosophy. In Barcelona, 7% of robbery crimes aim to steal the victim’s watch, hence the need to create a specific unit. Since the beginning of May, Titanio has added 70 detainees. “Thieves literally go fishing until they find a victim. Summer is high season for them because there are more tourists and they wear short sleeves, which makes things easier, “describes Lisardo Hidalgo, who is an inspector of the Barcelona Criminal Investigation Division of the Mossos d’Esquadra.
The watches have a spring in the bracelet so that the clasp jumps and, in this way, prevents the owner from losing his hand if it gets caught on something. The thieves are perfectly aware of the mechanism and know how to open it without the victim noticing. As if it were a game of tricksters, the clock quickly changes hands – “some move on scooters”, adds the inspector – and location once stolen, so that if the police catch the thief in the area, they will rarely recover the loot at that time. Depending on police pressure, they leave the piece “cooling off” in a safe house; In a recent operation, the Mossos Titanium Group found 13 watches hidden in the support of a ceiling lamp, a shoe box and a stuffed dog. But they can also take you out of the country in hours. “It’s extraordinarily easy to do. You can carry one on your wrist and another in your luggage and nobody is going to say anything to you”, explains Lisardo Hidalgo.
The gangs have become professionalized and there is, curiously, a specialization by modalities and places of origin of the delinquents. It is a reality verified in innumerable police operations. The leap from common crime to organized crime occurred in Spain at the hands of Italian thieves -almost always from Naples- experts in stealing watches from a motorcycle: they slowly passed by the victim, snatched it from the wrist with a jerk and fled at high speed. Sometimes they are violent robberies, because they drag the owner or hit him if he resists.
The Neapolitan clans stay for three to five days in which they dedicate themselves to stealing watches and return to their country with the loot. In Spain they have a minimal infrastructure: “Other Italians are in charge of giving them coverage – clarifies the chief inspector of Marbella -, basically a motorcycle and accommodation so as not to have to register.” Some belong to the lower echelons of the mafia and others have contacts with rowdies, but are not inside the organization.
sex offers
The specialty of theft or affectionate hug is typical of Romanian gangs. «They act in the morning, until noon, or already at dawn. They previously select their target: an older man or woman, preferably in a drunken state,” Toribio details. If he is a boy, “they hug him and even touch his genitals and propose sex; if he is a woman, they make love to them and offer themselves as housekeepers ». In this maneuver, in which they break the safety distance, their watch is stolen without them noticing anything. “They are very fine, some victims have realized hours later when they got into the shower.”
These gangs, says the chief inspector, have extraordinary mobility. «Everything is itinerant and removable. When we don’t have them in Marbella, they are in Alicante, Murcia or Madrid. They make forays of a week or ten days and leave. The police have verified that these are family clans where they have been taught since they were children (one of the latest operations arose after locating a video of a minor with wads of bills on Tik Tok). In Spain they lead a nomadic and precarious life, but in Romania they have even built marble mansions with the loot amassed from the theft of watches.
The last to join the criminal map drawn by the Police and Mossos are the Maghrebi and Franco-Algerian gangs specialized in the Ronaldinho method. They act “in a herd”: they entertain the victim with a ball (or even without it, simply simulating a dribble) and carelessly take his watch. While the Neapolitan and Romanian clans commit one or two robberies a day so as not to attract attention, the Maghrebi gangs devastate – “they do all they can”, says Toribio – and change cities.
They can become violent. “In Spain we have had cases in which they use the mataleón technique (they grab the victim by the neck to cut off their blood supply and make them faint),” adds the Marbella command, which links the origin of this modality to Barcelona, where they reside. “They are behind the largest number of robberies here,” confirms the Mossos inspector, who cites the districts of Ciudad Bella and L’Eixample as the most punished. “When that area is badly burned,” Toribio intervenes, “they move throughout the country. They know that in Marbella they have another market niche”. These youth gangs, he says, get more watches back. “Neapolitans and Rumanians have more triennia”, jokes the chief inspector.
#Ronaldinho #hug #luxury #watches #stolen