Spanish cops have smashed a notorious gang’s €2.1million per year tarmac scam following a three-year probe, the Irish Mirror can reveal.
Investigators from the Guardia Civil arrested two men and a woman from Ireland who were operating in the Rathkeale Rovers latest fraud.
And they are hunting for two others, including the ringleader, in a bid to bring them to justice. Both are from Ireland.
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The mob targeted premises throughout Spain, including industrial estates and even schools.
The major investigation – which became Operation Ricadona – into the Limerick-based Traveller gang began in 2019 after a complaint was filed by a businessman from the town of Picassent in Valencia who had been conned out of money.
The gang were sophisticated in their scam, posing as legitimate businessmen with what appeared to be proper, legal documents.
Their modus operandi was very similar in each of the jobs, with one member of the group appearing in premises of a company posing as a representative of a construction company. He showed false documentation and then offered the same services to pave an area outside the client company at a price well-below the market value.
When the victims of the scam signed the contracts, work got underway in the following days.
Around 10 Irish people would turn up to carry out the tarmac laying with small cranes and tarmac resurfacing machinery.
Once the gang had vanished, the clients would realise the work was substandard but they had already paid over the money for the job.
The scammers also exaggerated the measurements of the area they were supposed to be working on in order to milk their victims of as much cash as possible.
The money transferred to the gang went into a specifically-created account, before it was withdrawn from ATMs and taken out of the country.
As part of the Guardia Civil’s probe, they established that in just over a one-year period, the Rathkeale Rovers made €2,163,902.57.
But officers say there was no record registration of any worker, corporate tax payments or any other type of tax. Cops yesterday confirmed they have arrested two men and a woman over the scam whilst they hunt for two others, including the ringleader, who they believe is outside their jurisdiction.
The Guardia Civil say the suspects face charges of fraud against public finances and against social security, money laundering and for being in a criminal organisation which operated throughout Spain.
The operation is only the latest against the Rathkeale Rovers, which now carry out their tarmac swindles across most of Western Europe.
In April last year, police in France and Italy seized two loads of their road resurfacing equipment, impounding a Polish-registered lorry, a mini-digger and a steamroller. In the months beforehand, the mob’s cronies were intimidating gullible householders into paying them over the odds for the tarmacadam jobs.
But when they are caught in one location, they tend to just move onto another and the substantial amount of money they make allows them to do so.
The Rathkeale Rovers’ tarmac scams span worldwide, after previously coming to the attention of police forces in Australia, Argentina, Peru, Chile and the Dominican Republic. They’ve also targeted vulnerable people in building scams in the US and Canada.
Last month, Europol said Environmental crime networks said gangs like the Rathkeale Rovers pose a “key threat” to global security.
It added: “Members of the Irish mobile organised crime group known as the Rathkeale Rovers moved from profitable activities in drugs, cigarettes, and counterfeiting into robbing museums of their rhino horns all over Europe to resell the ivory to buyers.” The Limerick-based network was also named last year by the EU Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation over the sale of false-negative Covid-19 certificates.
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