The Guardia Civil, within the framework of the Zintat operation, has dismantled two very active criminal groups dedicated to the theft of the telephone line cable that operated in the autonomous communities of Castilla-La Mancha, Madrid and Castilla y León. Seven people have been arrested as alleged perpetrators of more than a hundred robberies and another person is being investigated as the recipient of the stolen merchandise.
The agents searched a scrapyard in the town of San Fernando de Henares where a ton of burnt copper from the theft of power lines and abundant documentation were recovered.
The operation began in January of last year when the Guardia Civil detected an increase in theft of wiring belonging to the telephone line that affected some 30 towns in the province of Guadalajara where the telephone service was temporarily interrupted.
Continuing with the investigations, the agents detected two criminal groups based in the Community of Madrid, which were dedicated exclusively to the commission of this type of robbery.
Likewise, it was revealed that the members of these groups worked in a coordinated manner and presented high geographical mobility. They committed several weekly robberies in towns in the autonomous communities of Madrid, Castila y León and Castilla-La Mancha. In addition, they had a network of receivers to whom they quickly delivered the merchandise for sale.
The investigators also discovered that the perpetrators acquired second-hand vehicles and vans that they abandoned after perpetrating the thefts.
The Guardia Civil detained four people in the Segovian town of Cerezo de Abajo when they were caught sawing several telephone line poles. The second of the criminal groups was dismantled last January with the arrest of three other people, two in the town of Coslada (Madrid) and one in Guadalajara.
The alleged perpetrators of these events sawed off the telephone poles and once they were on the ground they cut the cables into sections of about 10 metres in length. Subsequently, they were burned in the field in isolated areas to detach the wiring cover and their subsequent sale in the illegal market.
As a result of this operation, more than 70 robberies committed in the province of Guadalajara have been clarified and close to 35 more crimes in the provinces of Madrid, Cuenca, Toledo, Segovia, Valladolid, Palencia and Zamora.
The investigation is still open, so the clarification of more crimes committed by these criminal groups is not ruled out.
