Costa News Spain Breaking News | English News in Spain.
In collaboration with the Carabinieri in Italy, the Guardia Civil has brought down an international criminal group that specialised in the theft and forged luxury cars from Italy and Spain. These were then shipped to Belgium and sold in the United Arab Emirates.
According to a statement Nine people have been arrested by the Guardia Civil in Italy. The group is accused of stealing and forging 90 high-end vehicles, valued at over €18 million, and then laundering more than €2.5 million through a complex and opaque cryptocurrency network.
Luxury car theft to order from UAE, uncovered in Spain & Italy
The investigation was launched by the Guardia Civil in October 2024 after police cooperation. Europol with the Italian Carabinieri In the Reggio Emilia area, they discovered a criminal ring that was stealing and faking luxury cars in Italy. Additional inquiries revealed that the group operated in Malaga in the same way.
In Spain gangs searched the Costa del Sol for exclusive vehicles in an attempt to recreate “Gone in 60 Seconds Costa del Sol”. They installed discrete geolocation devices on the cars to track their real-time location. The group would target vehicles parked in car parks or garages in public areas.
Some of the members supervised the area in order to ensure the success of the robbery, while others carried out the robbery using the security systems bypassed and started the vehicles without keys or with force. Stolen vehicles were then transported to a strategically placed warehouse in Malaga’s Axarquia.
In UAE, sophisticated electronics are used to conceal tracks in car thefts
The Guardia Civil reported This facility was equipped “with sophisticated electronic counter-surveillance” measures to conceal the vehicles until the perpetrators came back to Spain to change identifying features such as license plates, chassis numbers and recoded new keys. A member of the organization then transported the vehicle from Antwerp to Belgium to be exported to the United Arab Emirates.
The criminal network laundered over €2.5 million through a sophisticated financial scheme using cryptocurrencies to obscure the illicit origins of the funds. The criminal network used frontmen who acted as digital wallet and account holders to complicate the asset tracking and avoid judicial action.
The police operation resulted in the seizure of assets worth over €3.5 million, including luxury vehicles, properties, cash, and digital assets directly linked to the criminal network and its collaborators.
In Spain the operation was coordinated by the Guardia Civil Vehicle Crime Section of Central Operational Unit UCO and the Organic Judicial Police Unit of Malaga. This operation involved a Eurojust/Europol investigation team that is crucial for combating criminal transnational organisations such as this.
