On August 12, the Argentine Nathy Peluso was close to the full house at the Starlite Festival, in Marbella (Málaga). It was one of many concerts at the event during the summer, but that night was special. Around four in the morning, when the public had already left the premises and only a handful of employees and security personnel remained, a blackout occurred. The lights stopped illuminating and the security cameras stopped recording. Minutes later, the safe that kept the 70,000 euros of the collection had disappeared. The director of the festival, Sandra García-Sanjuán, explained that the thieves had taken "even the tip of the waiters." They used a wheelbarrow to load it and vanished. Up to now,when the National Police has arrested seven people —five men and two women— for these events, several of them workers of the festival itself. They belong to an organization specializing in robberies with force in homes and businesses on the Costa del Sol, and had even robbed the offices of the lawyers who represented them in previous cases. Three of them are already in prison.
"It was a surprise," García-Sanjuán recounted the day after the robbery, which that night was accompanied by names such as Antonio Banderas, María Casado or Valeria Mazza. Everything went like any other of the concerts that fill the Nagüeles quarry, location of the musical event, until at dawn everything went wrong. "They were professional people because of how they did it and it has been a task," he assured in Hello! the person in charge of the festival. Precisely the way used to take the safe was one of the first clues followed by the Specialized and Violent Crime Unit (UDEV) of the National Police in Marbella, which took charge of the investigation and launched the so-called Star operation.
The power outages and the disconnection of the surveillance cameras demonstrated his knowledge of electricity. But they also knew perfectly well the operation of the event's security devices, so the agents aimed one of their hypotheses at the Starlite personnel. The police verified that several of the festival workers had a history of crimes against property and belonged to a criminal group dedicated to robberies in offices, commercial establishments and homes in towns such as Marbella, Estepona, Mijas, Coín or Guaro, always on the Costa of the Sun and its surroundings.
The gang came to do commissioned work and on one of the occasions, allegedly stole from the law firms that had previously represented them, according to the National Police, which explained that they were "highly qualified" for these crimes. They had a ringleader who selected the targets and three people who executed the robberies. The rest of the members kept the stolen effects, they gave them an outlet on the black market and, with the profits, they acquired narcotic substances.
Now, the National Police has arrested the seven people – five men and two women – in Marbella, Estepona and Guaro as allegedly responsible for the crimes of robbery with force and belonging to a criminal group. "What happened, what happened?" Said one of those arrested while the policemen jumped on him to put the handcuffs on him in one of the performances of the Star operation, which has served not only to clarify the theft of the box fort of the Starlite festival, also another dozen robberies. During the house searches carried out in the three towns in Malaga, 20,000 euros in cash were seized, as well as a wide range of stolen effects - most of them electronic devices such as laptops, televisions or mobile phones - as well as watches, jewellery, drugs,useful for the traffic of these narcotic substances, a moped and doubled license plates. Those arrested were placed at the disposal of the Investigating Court number 2 of Marbella, which decreed the imprisonment of the main investigators in the case.