'Gang of pilots': one of the million-dollar thieves is a two-time motorsport champion

They haven't baptized it yet, but it could well be called "the band of pilots".

It is that at least two of the suspects of having stolen from apartments a loot of more than a million dollars, are recognized protagonists in the

.

There is a track tourism runner arrested and a fugitive two-time TC champion from the Southeast.

The detainee is Facundo Carro, who

the raid on his home.

He appeared with the lawyer Lautaro Resúa at the headquarters of the Mar del Plata Investigations Delegation and on Friday before the prosecutor Fernando Berlingeri, from UFI 14, refused to testify.

Carro raced in Class One Track Tourism with his Choury Racing Group team.

Along with the pilot, and represented by the same lawyer, Alejandro Suárez also turned himself in.

From his arrest, the prosecutor has 15 days to order preventive detention.

He charges them with the crime of

.

Both are housed in the mayor's office of UP 44, in Batán.

"They refused to testify on my advice and only now is the work of our defense beginning. We already had access to the case and we will read it, see the full videos and analyze them," explained the defense lawyer, who denied that it is a illicit association, the main hypothesis of the prosecution.

"For us there would be no room for such an accusation. The prosecutor already accuses four people of being part of a gang, of having committed the crimes and there is one of them who does not appear either in the wiretaps or in the videos," he said.

And he recounted that "at the moment he counts the four as members and has not yet given a rank to each of them."

Some of the stolen apartments were in buildings in Playa Grande.

The fugitives are Mauricio Di Norcia, owner of a dealership, and Ricardo Soteris, also a pilot.

In 2018, Soteris, nicknamed "Barqui", obtained the two-time

.

It is believed that both could be delivered in the next few hours;

weighs an international arrest warrant requested by the prosecutor in the case.

Prosecutor Berlingeri and the staff of the local Departmental Investigations Directorate identified the suspects after a series of expert reports on different cell phones.

From these they recovered messages in which the members of the band recognized different robberies.

Investigators believe that the gang committed

in the last seven months in apartments in the macrocentro and in the Playa Grande area.

They studied the victims based on sensitive information they obtained, such as the basis of their savings or real estate transactions that they had recently made.

Then, they duplicated access keys to the buildings.

When the keys had a chip, criminals followed vehicles, used inhibitors and stole them.

The robberies were committed by way of "escruche", that is, when the owners of the house were not there, or were traveling or, as in the last case, when they had gone out to dinner.

The first of the events attributed to the gang occurred on July 28 of last year in a building in Moreno at 3000 and, a few days later, the same gang committed another robbery in another apartment in the same building, taking advantage of the fact that their inhabitants were away.

The victims were two people aged 85 and 87.

From only one of those apartments, they took

and two firearms.

The band had already begun to spend part of the loot, when it returned to acting.

It was last November 13 in a building located six blocks from the previous one, in Bolívar at 3500. From there they left with

.

The last one occurred on January 20 in an apartment on Calle Rodríguez Peña at 100, in the heart of the Playa Grande area, from where

, as well as two suitcases loaded with other valuables.

Last Wednesday, with the endorsement of the Justice of Guarantees, police personnel raided four homes and a financial "cave" in the macrocentro of Mar del Plata in order to find the criminals, but the result was negative.

The procedures were carried out in a house in the "Rumencó Joven" private neighborhood, located on Jorge Newbery Avenue, in the south of the city;

in a house in French at 5300;

a property in San Juan at 4100;

in a house on 5000 Laprida street and in a place that operated as a "cave" in Catamarca at 2200, dedicated to the sale of foreign currency.

"There are footage from the security cameras of the buildings where the victims lived and nearby that show different members of the gang who were hanging around the area the days before committing the crimes," said the prosecutor.

He told this newspaper that

, "yes, some of them, complaints of fraud."

According to UFI 14, the gang was raised in the four robberies with

, about 42 million pesos, jewelry, watches and electronic equipment.

Part of the loot was spent on vehicles and they were planning to purchase a property;

They traveled abroad, two of them to the World Cup, others were tourists in another destination.

"Money was not recovered," an investigator said.

Silver Sea.

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