The fact that the Guardia Civil nabbed four men in a stolen car with drugs on board is not unusual, but how the police rumbled them is.

The Equipo de Delinquencia Organizada y Antidroga, belonging to the Guardia Civil arrested the four men in a high-range, stolen car with 143 kilos of hashish on board. The actual arrest took place at the Los Abades service station on the A-92 near Guadix.

The Guardia Civil keep a strict eye on this road as it is a highway for illegal substances, being moved from Algercias Port, where it enters the country before being shifted over to Almería and Valencia for distribution.

On this occasion, the police saw two vehicles arrive; a Mercedes van and a 4×4 BMW, whose occupants were acting nervously. But what really caught their eye was that the number plate on the BMW was too old for this kind of new car; you can have a new plate on an old car, if you have just imported it, but you won’t find an old-style number-plate on a new car. So, the police ran the number plate through the computer and lo, it had nothing to do with the car to which it was attached, so the police moved in.

They checked the chassis number, which had been altered and then decided that it was time to identify the four men and search the cars. In the BMW they found four sports holdalls containing 143 kilos of hashish.

The men were aged between 27 and 41 and were all Romanian, residing in El Ejido.The first BMW with the dodgy plate, by the way, turned out to have been stolen in Roquetas, Almería.

(News: Guadix, Granada, Andalucia)