The appointment was early.
Around seven in the morning on February 13, this tall, tattooed guy showed up at the door with a few beers.
The tenant of the apartment, a 23-year-old boy from Madrid, did not feel like drinking so soon, but his companion insisted.
He didn't know him more than from a few conversations through social networks of contacts.
Those drinks are the last thing he remembers: he opened his eyes a few hours later on his sofa, without a cell phone or computer.
Still dazed, he went to file a complaint at the Hortaleza district police station in Madrid and later, to the hospital, where they determined that he had also been the victim of sexual assault.
This man later found the condom wrapper in the trash and a yogurt container that his attacker had eaten while he was unconscious.
The next day, another man appeared at the same citizen service office and described the same events, in this case, without rape, but with a destroyed face.
The assault had occurred the day before that of the 23-year-old boy.
Around eight in the evening of February 12, this second complainant had met a boy whom he had met on Grindr under the name of Activo XL.
His description was different from the one he had given the victim the day before.
The first was tall with streaks in his hair and the second was shorter, both Latin Americans and heavily tattooed.
"At that moment we determined that it was not an isolated incident and that it involved several perpetrators," says Inspector Eduardo Díez, from the Hortaleza police station.
Then began a "craft work" of checking one by one the latest complaints of robberies with violence presented in Madrid, in search of more coincidences.
They found another very similar one in the Usera district.
The theft of the victims' mobiles made it difficult to start the investigations, because social networks were the link between all the robberies.
However, one of the lines of investigation began to bear fruit and they found four suspects who lived in a tourist apartment in Hortaleza and who had landed in Spain just a few days before.
The signs pointed to them.
One had a record for the same crimes and the older brother of another of the men was in prison for the same
modus operandi
.
At that time they found three of them in the house, while another had gone to Galicia, where his family lives.
He had started the procedures to request residence in Spain.
The latter is the one accused of having committed the sexual assault on the 23-year-old boy.
crime tourism
Upon entering that provisional home that they had chosen for their days of "criminal tourism", as the inspector defines it, the agents discovered a multitude of jewelry, electronic devices and cards in five suitcases.
When they analyzed the objects they discovered that they belonged to new victims.
In total, investigators attribute eight robberies with violence to them.
In addition to those of Hortaleza and Usera, they registered others in the district of Salamanca, in that of Retiro and in that of Carabanchel.
“Aggressors used Tinder and Grindr.
There was one more person dedicated to managing these profiles, who "sometimes used the real photos of the perpetrators and other times, of people who looked like them, so the victims did not realize that they were false images," says Inspector Díez. .
In addition to stealing items, they also took the victims' credit cards and went shopping.
His favorite acquisitions were computers and Iphones.
"They also bought official Real Madrid shirts and another from a luxury brand for 530 euros," says the researcher Díez.
In all cases, samples have been taken from the victims to find out if there has been chemical submission, although the results have not yet reached the court.
However, in the search of the house that they had rented with a false identity, the police found several blister packs of sleeping pills.
“They have seen a vein of business.
They come to Spain, give a lot of blows and leave again.
In this case, they were at a very high rate, because they had only been here for a few days and we believe that there may still be more victims”, explains the inspector.
All of them are Colombian and are between 22 and 35 years old.
After that arrest, the judge released all of them, except the one who was blamed for the rape.
Just one day after they took to the streets, investigators discovered three other assaults with indications that they may be involved.
The police officers decided to arrest them again to attribute the new crimes to them and found two of them at the airport, about to board a plane to return to Colombia.
"The third was not there because, having been arrested the previous year for similar events, he did not want to risk taking a flight," says Díez.
The judge released them again, this time, with measures to prevent them from leaving Spain.
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