The sequence was repeated each time the football players, fans or lower-category associations left the dressing room and made their way to the pitch. When they returned to the booth, they found that their cell phone, money or valuables that they had kept there had been stolen. A joint complaint of 12 thefts in La Puebla de Montalbán, Toledo, has led to the arrest of four people for stealing at least 123 terminals worth around €60,000 in nine provinces. The Civil Guard have devised a joint intervention called Operation Rox23 against a gang that travels hundreds of kilometers a day to choose exactly which facilities to attack both during the weekday and at games on Saturday or Sunday.
Those arrested, three men and one woman, used the training to get into the locker room, which was rarely used during these sessions, and to take away technical equipment or valuables. “After receiving their loot, they secretly left the football field, with the players noticing the robbery until they finished practice or the game,” the Civil Guard said in a statement, stressing that they don’t care was Trade with amateur teams or with lower-category clubs such as Real Valladolid, Atlético de Madrid or CD Alcorcón.
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The authorities have evidence that at least 123 mobile phones have been stolen, but they do not rule out that the criminal group may have confiscated other mobile phones. The detainees, aged between 22 and 38, have suffered beatings in the provinces of Toledo, Salamanca, Burgos, Ávila, Valladolid, Guadalajara, Madrid, Ciudad Real and Cuenca. When she was arrested, 40 mobile phones and 6,500 euros in cash were seized. The Torrijos Civil Guard’s Roca team closed the investigation after “conducting hundreds of interviews with victims and witnesses to understand the crimes.”
These four individuals are accused of at least 123 property crimes. The Guardia Civil has highlighted the gang’s great mobility, as they “traveled hundreds of kilometers every day to select the sports facilities where they were robbed, both during weekday training sessions and at weekend games”. Such facilities tend to have a large number of changing rooms, through which hundreds of people pass each day, and which are empty for much of the day, poorly supervised and without much security, so incidents like this, or thefts of any kind, are relatively rare , as players of all ages play or train on the pitches. This context meant that the participants, after taking whatever interested them from the dressing rooms, could exit the location “disguised”.
One of the most recent instances in which these thefts became particularly notable was during a match between Real Valladolid’s Juvenil B during their visit to Avila’s CD Zona Norte in May. The Pucelanos led 4-0 at half-time when, on returning to the dressing room, they found the thieves had broken down their dressing room door and stolen all of the team’s mobile phones, wallets and valuables, as well as the car keys, according to the Technical Panel. The meeting was adjourned and the matter reported to the National Police before the visiting expedition returned to Valladolid without their mobile devices and without documentation.
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