Manresa Copper Gang Arrested After Invoices Gave Them Away
Police arrested eleven people in Manresa, Sallent, Terrassa and Berga over a copper theft in Tenerife. How the gang's own invoices exposed them.
Spain’s Policía Nacional (the national police force) has broken up a gang based mostly in Manresa, the capital of the Bages county in central Catalonia, that is accused of stealing copper cable from a telecommunications company in Tenerife. Officers arrested eleven people on Oct. 23 in Manresa, Sallent, Terrassa and Berga, according to the Barcelona crime outlet El Caso.
The suspects were caught because of the paperwork. When they sold the stolen copper to a buyer on the island, they issued invoices under the real details of a company in Manresa where they supposedly worked.
A theft reported in Tenerife in July
The case began on July 15, when a Tenerife company went to the Policía Nacional to report the theft. The firm, which El Caso says is the only one that installs communications network cable across the whole island, told officers it had seen a group of people taking the material.
According to the company’s inventory, the missing copper weighed a little over 15 tonnes and was worth more than a hundred thousand euros. El Caso’s headline gives a higher weight than the inventory figure in its report.
How the invoices led back to Catalonia
A few days after the complaint, investigators from the Policía Nacional unit that handles property crimes found the copper at a company in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. That firm had bought it. During the search, officers found receipts and invoices issued by the company that had sold the metal, and those documents carried the real details of the Manresa business.
From there, investigators spent about three months identifying the people involved. El Caso describes the group as an organised gang with clear roles, most of whose members lived in Manresa. The suspects are aged between 20 and 41, and most are Dominican nationals, the outlet reported.
The charges
The eleven were arrested on suspicion of robbery with force, criminal damage, fraud, money laundering and belonging to a criminal group. All of these remain accusations. They were brought before the courts in Manresa and Terrassa on Oct. 29. It is not known how many of them have previous police records.
Why it matters for people in Catalonia
Most of the arrests took place in towns in Barcelona province: Manresa, Sallent and Berga in central Catalonia, and Terrassa in the Vallès area near Barcelona. The case shows that a gang living in these towns was accused of operating as far away as the Canary Islands.
Copper cable theft also affects ordinary users. The stolen material in this case belonged to the company that installs the communications network on Tenerife, the outlet said. El Caso did not report any service outages linked to the theft.
What happens next
The case is now in the hands of the courts in Manresa and Terrassa. The Policía Nacional has not said whether more arrests are expected, and no trial date has been reported.
Source: El Caso
