A 35-year-old man was arrested in Salobreña by the Guardia Civil as part of their police operation, Operación Computer26, which is an investigation into the theft of 159 laptop computers.

It was the Motril-based Guardia Civil that was handed the task and who began looking into this theft, valued at 80,000 euros, on the 1st of August after a routine traffic stop within the municipality of Ítrabo.

The officers found numerous laptops and chargers on the back seat and inside the boot of a car they had pulled over. When we say numerous, we mean 81, which were immediately confiscated after the driver could not account for their origin.

From there, officers began tracking down where the laptops came from, contacting the computer brand, who confirmed that they had been shipped from the Netherlands to a logists company in the centre of Madrid.

This company confirmed that 159 laptops, valued at 80,000 euros, had gone missing from a recent shipment. Although no external anomalies were noticed at the time of delivery, the people in Madrid later verified the existence of empty boxes inside several pallets belonging to the same shipment, which prompted them to file a formal complaint.

After that is was a case of determining at what point during their transit theft took place and which company were involved in the transport and delivery.

This is when it came to light that one of the drivers that had participated in the international transfer by road was none other than the man who had been stopped by the police in Ítrabo.

The police suspect that during the journey on a rest stop he had tampered with the seals of several pallets to steal the computers. He then repackaged the empty boxes and placed them back inside to simulate a normal load.

On the 31st of August, having joined all the dots, they arrested the man and put him before a judge in Motril to commence judicial proceedings.

(News: Salobreña, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)

Keywords: Laptop Theft in Transit, Itrabo, Netherlands, Pallets, Empty Boxes, Driver, Rest Stop

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