Five foreign pickpockets suspected of being part of a “highly sophisticated and organised” transnational criminal gang were arrested “in flagrante” in the Belém district of Portugal’s capital city, Lisbon, and have since been remanded in custody.
In a statement, the Lisbon Metropolitan Command of the Public Security Police (PSP) said that the three men and two women are part of a transnational criminal organisation and are suspected of stealing wallets and withdrawing money using the victims’ bank cards.
According to the PSP, the crime that led to the detention took place in Praça do Império, when four of the pickpockets followed a tourist.
When the victim was climbing the stairs of the underpass next to the Padrão dos Descobrimentos, two women stood in front of her, blocking her way, while the two men “stood behind her and one of them opened her bag and stole her wallet, turning back” and separating from the group, the PSP said.
Investigators from the PSP special force dedicated to combating this type of crime (F3C) saw the pickpockets in action and followed them to Praça do Império, where three of them were preparing to get into a car with a fifth member at the wheel, who was waiting for “the rest of the group to arrive so they could make a quick getaway”.
The PSP arrested the four individuals present and later arrested the individual who had separated from the group.
In the getaway car – a rented vehicle – investigators found a touchpad with a bank card reader, which would have allowed them to “make immediate monetary transactions with the cards stolen from the victims”, said the PSP.
The man who separated from the group, with the victim’s bank cards, went to an ATM and made eight withdrawals of €150 each, totalling €1,200.
When this individual was arrested, the PSP recovered the cash withdrawn, which was handed over to the victim.
“Investigators realised that they were dealing with a highly sophisticated and organised group of pickpockets, as can be seen from the way they travelled in a rented car, their modus operandi and the fact that they had access to technical equipment,” the statement adds
Only two of those arrested had a history of this type of theft, while the other three had “just arrived in Lisbon”.
All five have already been brought before a judge for initial questioning and are now awaiting trial in preventive detention.
This far, the suspects’ nationalities have not been given.
Source: LUSA
