They jumped the fence, tore off the window frame with a screwdriver, took million-dollar loot, and then went to a retail establishment in the center of Madrid to sell off the pieces of jewelry.
Chokers worth 10,000 euros and earrings worth 6,000 for a third of their value.
It is the gang that robbed the Rayo Vallecano footballers Radamel Falcao and the Real Madrid player Rodrygo Goes, but also six other businessmen and wealthy families from the luxury developments in Madrid.
In eight months he made two million euros.
What put them on the trail of their future victims were their posts on Instagram; they were addicted to photos and videos in which the players showed off their watches and jewelry.
They were a quiet band, who tried not to meet anyone inside their homes, so they had the LaLiga calendars under control, in the case of the footballers, and the routines of the family members, in the case of businessmen.
On one occasion, they ran into a domestic worker, whom they put in a room while they did their work.
In another, they spent two hours in a mansion looking for valuable objects, while the children and caregivers were in a living room watching a movie.
They didn't find out what happened until they saw the security footage shortly after.
The investigation began with the robbery at Rodrygo's house, in May 2023 in La Moraleja, while he was playing a Copa del Rey match in Seville.
Hence the name of the operation: Cartuja.
The gang took more than 500,000 euros in jewelry and watches.
The agents of the National Police's Forced Robbery Group .
In July 2022, they already tried to rob that mansion, but they ran into the gardener and preferred to abort the mission.
In those images, investigators identified a car, in which a woman was waiting for the two men who had entered the house.
The vehicle was in the name of one of the band members, a mistake made by beginners who paid dearly.
From that name onwards, the agents continued pulling the thread and found the rest of the cronies.
The band was perfectly organized.
Two were the ones who always entered the house, another three collaborated in logistics, surveillance and information gathering, the wife of one of them helped with surveillance and distributing the stolen merchandise and the employee of the establishment in the who undersold pieces of jewelry and watches.
In their records, some of them appeared acquired for a price of 999, the maximum that can be paid in cash but infinitely lower than their real value.
The assailants were always hooded and wearing gloves and their main objective was the main rooms of the homes, where the most valuable objects were.
The thieves followed many of their victims on social networks.
In those images, they looked at their future goals, their possessions, and also controlled their movements.
When one of the members of the gang located a desirable and potential victim, he would take a screenshot and send it to the other members of the network to begin preparing the next hit.
They not only looked at the valuable pieces, but also at all the videos and photos that the footballers and businessmen or their families uploaded to their accounts.
Thus, they planned the best places to enter, the weak points of the homes and how many people lived in the house.
The investigative work even made it possible to thwart two other robberies.
The police knew where they were going to attack and deployed an important preventive deployment to deter criminals.
One of these failed coups occurred in La Finca, the exclusive urbanization of Pozuelo de Alarcón, practically a bunker of privacy and security for its sought-after inhabitants.
“That they tried to rob there gives an idea that they were growing and perfecting their attacks more and more,” says one of the investigators.
The other robbery that they did not complete was against a businessman from Torrelodones.
In addition to more ambitious objectives, the gang members also took over more telephone lines and stolen vehicles to go to the mansions.
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