The Civil Guard dismantled a criminal gang that was taking the property of elderly people, mostly foreigners, who died in Spain, most of whom had no known heirs. The criminal organization took advantage of the spike in deaths during the Covid-19 pandemic To properties they did not own in their name. According to the investigation, they confiscated valuables of all kinds, such as apartments, and then used them for their business, renting them out for money laundering or tax evasion, for example. So far, 22 inheritance appropriations have been determined, but the investigations are still open.
Eight of its members were arrested last October, including two Basque businessmen, two employees of a funeral home in Alicante, another employee of a nursing home and a former civil servant of a town hall in the same province with access to the commercial register. Despite this, investigators found that on March 15 the gang re-rented goods that had already been confiscated.
The operation, christened Mano Negra by the Guardia Civil, began in May 2021 in Benissa (Alicante, population 11,871), a tourist town in the Marina Alta region in the north of the province, where agents sealed off a house following the owner’s death until an heir can be found. Shortly thereafter, however, they were made aware that the police seal had been removed and several valuables were stolen from inside, including a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. They also learned that the property had been renovated and was being advertised on a vacation rental platform.
Various assets belonging to the eight prisoners were confiscated for appropriating 22 inheritances from deceased people in Euskadi and Valencia Civil Guard (EFE)
The investigation didn’t take long to identify two funeral home workers in a city in the same region who “stole jewelry from the deceased that was not claimed by relatives, passed information to rob their homes, and obtained their bank codes,” he says Civil Guard. .
These arrests led investigators in charge of the case from the Calp Judicial Police to the group’s respected leaders, two brothers from Bilbao — a 63-year-old woman with legal background and a 54-year-old man who worked as an insurance agent –. In addition to the network of companies that bore her name, 12 in the woman’s case, including two real estate agencies and four agencies, and an insurance broker in her brother’s case, the gang leaders used a construction company, another for insurance, a mechanical workshop in Bilbao, two Hotels in the provinces of Murcia and Valencia, a restaurant in Dénia (Alicante) and two companies in Ireland and Malta to squeeze as much money as possible through tax evasion from the homes that the distant deceased without heirs. “They even took over a cultural association in Bilbao” where they registered their victims in order to fake donations and non-payment of fees. The business worked, but “during the pandemic, with deaths mounting and bureaucracy crippled by lockdown,” it became a gold mine.
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When they found an elderly deceased and seemingly with no heirs to claim their property, the conspiracy pulled all the strings. Sometimes they forged commercial contracts to make the deceased guarantors of their companies to keep their wealth for wealth stewardship. In other cases, the former registrar has advised them and amended the cadastre To the properties in their name. And there were houses in which the Usucapion method – also called the acquisition rule – was used. It consists of the prolonged use of the properties and the payment of their taxes and consumables so that they can be acquired after a period established by law.
According to the investigation, they used their own properties in Dénia and the Basque Country to rent and sell the properties. They didn’t leave a single edge. The employee of a nursing home arrested during this operation “obtained documents and bank codes from the victims,” according to the armed institute, “and managed to transfer more than 112,000 euros from two ninety-year-olds of German and Swiss nationality living in Spain to the bank accounts of the criminal group “.
The investigators managed to prove that the gang had appropriated at least 20 properties with a total value of more than three million euros. Four of these houses are in Paris. They also identified 22 deceased people of Spanish (2), French (5), Swiss (4), German (8) and Belgian, British and Finnish (1) nationalities who became victims of the criminal network.
Faced with the risk of absconding of one of the organization’s leaders, the Guardia Civil decided to act in October with seven searches in the provinces of Alicante, Valencia and Bizkaia, leading to eight arrests, including those of the two leaders. In addition, three other people were under investigation as part of the same operation. They are all charged with the crimes of criminal association, robbery, fraud, forgery, embezzlement, money laundering, usurpation of marital status and illegal possession of firearms. The Investigative Court 2 of Dénia ordered the Basque businesswoman to go to prison without bail and to security measures for the rest.
However, the gang’s activities did not stop, they point out to EL PAÍS, the sources of the investigation. On January 15, one of these individuals was re-arrested on new facts related to the same conspiracy. And on March 15, agents again took testimony from one of the defendants because he sublet some of the houses that had already been restored. The researchers do not rule out that the number of victims could increase.