The 48-year-old head of a high-end car theft gang, who has just been released from jail after being charged for his involvement in the theft of 75 top-of-the-range cars in Malaga, has been arrested again for the same offence. The number of reported vehicle thefts in the province dropped by 50% whilst he was serving time.
The man, of Bulgarian nationality, was originally one of four people arrested in June as part of Operation Beta, which resulted in the break-up of one of the most active criminal networks that stole luxury vehicles by disabling their security systems.
He was released from prison in October, after less than four months inside, and just a few weeks later the number of reported car thefts shot up again, leading investigators to suspect that the gang had resumed their activities.
In the first few days of December, the police received six reports of high-end vehicles being stolen and now the suspected ringleader has been detained again, just as he was about to get into a Range Rover in Cerrado de Calderón, in Malaga, which had been reported stolen a week earlier from a residential complex in Estepona.
To steal the vehicles, members of the gang would drive around developments on the Costa del Sol looking for suitable ones to target. Once they had identified them, they would return at night and go for those parked in the street, using a collection of remote controls and sensors which could clone frequencies to open the doors, before disconnecting or overriding vehicle security systems and geolocation devices.
The police investigation has revealed that the stolen cars were then sold to drug trafficking gangs in the Costa del Sol for an average of 6,000 euros each, who used them to transport drugs from one area to another before destroying them.
The investigation is ongoing.
