The sequence is short and quick, barely noticeable to those without a trained eye. Two young people walk along the central Passeig de Gràcia in Barcelona at half past four in the afternoon on a holiday Friday, December 8th. They are talking, their faces uncovered. One rides a scooter without getting on, the other accompanies him. They seem like two more tourists or two neighbors in the hornet's nest of visitors that the city welcomes.
But in reality, the two young people are not walking through Barcelona, they are following it. Between sentences they scan everyone they meet. His apparent frugality implies a cautious approach. Until they discover what they are looking for in the exclusive Cartier boutique in the luxury district of Barcelona: a Richard Mille RM 35-03 with a white strap and blue case on the wrist of an unsuspecting Taiwanese tourist.
The conversation between the two young people ends. His lizard body tenses. Hidden in the crowd, they turn and follow in Richard Mille's footsteps. The victim, who is traveling with two other men, does not notice that they are following him. The two luxury watch hunters part ways. One is standing in a corner with the scooter, the other is directly behind the group of three, looking at the clock. You have a jewel worth half a million euros within your reach.
The robbery takes place in seconds. The three friends prepare to cross a pedestrian crossing. The young man approaches, adrenaline rushing through his veins, and collides with the Taiwanese man. A chance encounter that actually requires a very thoughtful strike to open the clock's lock. His owner notices. Raise your hands with bare wrists. Shouting. The boy runs at a gallop with the Richard Mille in his possession. His partner is waiting for him on the scooter, which he jumps to and both disappear through Barcelona's Eixample at 50 kilometers per hour. In their bag they carry one of the most expensive watches ever stolen in Barcelona.
The next scene takes place in the Raval district: the opposite of the luxury of the Paseo de Gràcia. It's been eight days since the robbery. The Furas – plainclothes police officers who patrol the streets – recognize the two children. Their faces have spread internally to all the city's agents: They are the two young people, 23 and 21 years old, who got hold of a Richard Mille for 500,000 euros without much effort. They walk together again, they are carrying the same scooter with red wires and one of them is wearing the same necklace from the day of the robbery. The police arrest them without any major problems. One is on police record for a violent robbery and theft; the other is clean. There is no trace of the jewel.
A promotional image of a Richard Mille watch, model RM 35-03, as stolen from Passeig de Gràcia in Barcelona.
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“If a watch is stolen, you either get it back immediately or you never find it again,” explains Mossos d'Esquadra Sergeant Ramón Torner, head of the Titani group, which specializes in investigating luxury thefts. His office in the police station in the Sant Martí district of Barcelona is an open space shared by ten agents, two sergeants and he, who leads the team. Since May, they have been investigating the theft of 600 luxury watches. “There is no seasonality anymore,” he explains of this type of upheaval, which is usually carried out by young people who know the ropes and almost never act alone. “They practice how to get the insurance return,” the sergeant says.
Torner's team – founded last summer – patrols the streets but, above all, carries out meticulous analysis work to find criminals and their victims in the images captured by the hundreds of devices that monitor a city like Barcelona. To find Richard Mille's two thieves, the agents tracked all the cameras they found on their way: from stores, from ATMs, from public security… at an interval of “half an hour before and half hour after.” ” the theft. After hours of looking at images from five different cameras, they managed to reconstruct the course of the robbery and present it to the court. In the images, they explain, it is clear to see what happened.
Researchers are hesitant to assess the value of a watch to call it a luxury: “Any one from a well-known brand that gives a certain status, of high value.” This category also includes cases in which thieves unknowingly steal a counterfeit. “Let the criminal think for themselves that it is a luxury watch,” summarizes Torner. Imitations worth up to 3,000 euros were occasionally found, requiring the collaboration of specialist jewelers who had to disassemble the watch to verify its authenticity. Another requirement is that it is a robbery with violence. “That’s the biggest difficulty,” says Torner. Prove in court that the push, the targeted pull, with scratches on the victim, is a violent robbery.
Unlike other units, there are no top 10 thieves in the Titani group. Some faces are familiar, others, like the Richard Mille children, are new. “Some come, do the season and leave again,” says the sergeant. Others are repeat offenders and, depending on the opportunity, steal a cell phone, a bag or a watch. There are also more professional people linked to organized crime who can land in Barcelona, carry out the coup and leave. But they all have one thing in common: “They all know how to set the clock.” “Everyone has a receiver.” And they estimate that they can pay between 30 and 50 percent of the value of the watch to the thieves before they steal it bring to the Asian market.
When the Mossos arrested Richard Mille's thieves, the owner had already left Barcelona. The police informed him of the arrest. And the clock? he asked. The agents are convinced that they would not have found the jewel even if they had not obtained a court order to search their home – “they do not say where they live, they do not make it up, or provide addresses of lawyers for notifications” – they wouldn’t have found the jewel either. And the recipients who investigate more specialized units live in the shadows, with no background, and many of them are dedicated solely to surveillance. The two teens were released after being made available to the judge to await trial.
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