The Guardia Civil have detained four pickpockets operating in Tenerife in two separate arrests in Candelaria and Granadilla. The first arrest, called Operacíon Danube, was of three men, aged 31, 37, and 54, accused of theft in the municipality of Candelaria.
Agents had been investigating and watching several people after reports of thefts of wallets, handbags, and credit cards, and were alerted by a member of the public who witnessed them open a tourist's backpack and take a wallet from inside it.
Following this, they arrested the three men, whose nationalities haven’t been released, and recovered two wallets that had been thrown into a rubbish bin on a public street. Inside them, they found the documents of the owners, so the pertinent steps were taken to locate them.
After contacting them, the people who had been robbed recognized the wallets as their own, so that the Guardia Civil proceeded to charge the three men with theft.
In the second arrest, agents from the Guardia Civil in Granadilla de Abona, detained a fourth person, a 37-year-old man in El Medano, who had been ‘working’ with the other three and had four judicial orders against him, one of them for detention and entry into prison.
The detainees, together with the police investigations and reports, have been passed to the courts for sentencing.
