National Police in Spain have made 29 arrests in the breaking up of a Serbian gang of thieves responsible for over 100 frauds and burglaries.

National Police in Spain have made 29 arrests in the breaking up of a Serbian gang of thieves responsible for over 100 frauds and burglaries. The gang would often use the ‘Rip Deal’ con, in which they pretended to be foreign businessmen interested in a currency exchange where they would hand over fake cash.

The 29 arrested acted in four different groups right across Spain, Portugal, Italy and France. A jeweller arrested among the group is thought to have passed on the stolen property.
The investigation is being carried out by the judge in Instruction Court 2 in Denia and started looking at cases in Alicante province. But it soon emerged that the gang was operating over a much wider area.

The first Spanish group was based in Orihuela and worked across the provinces of Sevilla, Granada and Córdoba, while a second group based in Hondarribia in Guipúzcoa extended their activities to the south of France as well as in Navarra and the Basque Country.
A third group in Castellón travelled to Tarragona, Valencia, Murcia. Alicante and Albacete, and a fourth group operated in Portugal.

The arrests were made in March and April and three searches were carried out which resulted in more than 4 kilos of jewellery, two gold ingots weighing 600g each one, and 70,000 € in cash in addition to the false money to carry out the frauds.

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maniac who beheaded grandmother Jennifer Mills-Westley in a Tenerife shop was already wanted by police, it emerged today.

A warrant was issued for the arrest of Deyan Deyanov, 28, three days before he struck in the resort of Los Cristianos on Friday.

Magistrate Nelson Diaz Friaz ordered police to detain the Bulgarian so he could be examined by a psychiatrist.

Diaz Friaz was investigating Deyanov over an attack on a security guard, who was smashed in the face with a rock. He had been released on bail and was supposed to check in regularly with the court while he was waiting for a psychiatric assessment.

The magistrate issued the arrest warrant last Tuesday after he repeatedly failed to turn up. But police failed to find Deyanov, a paranoid schizophrenic who had been living rough.

Three days later he butchered Mrs Mills-Westley, 60, from Norwich, in a random attack in a Chinese-owned shop called Shung.

The mayor of Arona, Jose Albert Gonzalez Reveron, said Deyanov should have been locked up earlier.

"This person was well known to police and had been involved in very many altercations," he said. "I don't dare to talk about police negligence, but everyone would like him to have been detained earlier. He should have been in a psychiatric hospital."

The mayor described the murder as "the most tragic and horrific crime we've seen here in the last 30 years".

Mrs Mills-Westley had been living between the UK and Tenerife for 10 years, and owned two flats on the Spanish island.

Deyanov followed her into the shop last Friday morning, picked up a ham knife and stabbed her 14 times in the neck, severing her head. He then ran from the shop with the head in his hands, chased by security guards who wrestled him to the ground.

Detectives are examining chilling CCTV footage of Deyanov trying to buy a huge knife in a supermarket less than 30 minutes before he struck.

Holding his hands three feet apart, he told the shopkeeper: "I want a knife this big. I'm going to kill somebody."

Following Deyanov's arrest for the attack on a security guard last December, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital in the north of Tenerife but was released on bail in February.

Shortly afterwards he told police in Los Cristianos: "I am a prophet from God and I'm going to do something big."

Deyanov appeared in court in Arona on Saturday and was charged with murder. Mrs Mills-Westley's body is expected to be returned to the UK

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Toni Muldoon who faces more than four years in jail over the racket which fleeced cash from people with unwanted Costa del Sol properties.

Police are hunting Edinburghborn Richard Bain after he failed to appear in court in Malaga on fraud charges on May 9.
Bain, 46, is linked to Toni Muldoon who faces more than four years in jail over the racket which fleeced cash from people with unwanted Costa del Sol properties.
Bain was previously arrested in the UK on charges of theft and fraud under the name Richard Thompson.
He is alleged to have conned timeshare victims in Spain by offering legal assistance to recoup their losses but then disappeared with their cash.
Lawyer Antonio Flores, who represents 160 British claimants, said: "This was a multimillion pound scam."
Timeshare owners were conned into paying upfront fees of around s1200 for selling their Fuengirolabased companies linked to Muldoon between 2001 and 2006.
An arrest warrant has been issued for Bain, Muldoon's wife and five others.
One rippedoff Scot from Balerno, Midlothian, said: "They got me the first time. It was quite an operation. You could hear a lot of phones going off in the background."
At Monday's court hearing in Malaga, 10 gang members were given suspended sentences of up to two years.
Six people, including Muldoon, pleaded guilty to fraud while four admitted charges of illicit association.
The court ordered that s438,000 defrauded from 300 Scottish and English claimants be paid back.
Bain's firm, Conectese was also reportedly not registered with Spanish authorities.

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The regional infrastructure council has started the administrative procedure that will allow it to expropriate land needed to accommodate the future high-speed coastal rail link between Alicante and Valencia.

The regional infrastructure council has started the administrative procedure that will allow it to expropriate land needed to accommodate the future high-speed coastal rail link between Alicante and Valencia.

No mention has been made of what the process will cost or how much will be paid in compensation to people who may lose some or all of their property.

The rail link will also connect with Benidorm and El Altet Aiport as well as with the AVE high speed rail line between Alicante and Madrid.

A spokesman for the infrastructure council said that the expectation is that all of the land necessary for the rail link will be available within four months.

Infrastructure councillor Mario Flores recently told his counterpart in Madrid, Victor Morlán, that Valencia was happy with the draft protocols that need to be signed to get the rail project underway and that he hoped they could be signed by the middle of May at the latest.

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alleged fraud case against former travel agent Peter Newberry will go to trial in Benidorm on October 5, 2011.

alleged fraud case against former travel agent Peter Newberry will go to trial in Benidorm on October 5, 2011.

Lawyers acting on behalf of those affected by the alleged fraud have issued a list if names of the people who are to be called as witnesses in the case and who may be entitled to compensation.

Mr Newberry disappeared from his travel agents in Calle Moncada, Dénia in December 2001, leaving hundreds of expats without the Christmas holidays they had booked and paid for.

In some cases clients had handed over hundreds of thousands of pesetas in advance of their holiday with one couple claiming they lost 1.5 million pesetas paid for a 'holiday of a lifetime' to South America with their son.

As reported in Costa Blanca News at the time, Mr Newberry was a regular lay preacher at La Ermita church in Jávea but as soon as news broke over his disappearance he failed to turn up for Sunday services.

The law firm representing alleged victims says that those that made statements to the court at the time are legally bound to attend the October hearing and to that end they will receive an official court summons.

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SIXTY-FIVE per cent of the current staff at the Guadalpin Marbella and Guadalpin Banus hotels has agreed to a redundancy plan proposed by union UGT.

SIXTY-FIVE per cent of the current staff at the Guadalpin Marbella and Guadalpin Banus hotels has agreed to a redundancy plan proposed by union UGT. Both hotels, run by a branch of promoter Aifos, are in bankruptcy proceedings. The plan has been sent to the Malaga Mercantile Court for approval and has been backed by almost all the 200 employees, except eight at the Guadalpin Marbella and 12 at the Guadalpin Banus.

The staff have not been paid since December last year, nor have they received their bonus from July 2010.

The two hotels are due to be permanently taken over by Global International Hotel Business, a branch of Nortia, with whom an agreement was signed several months ago.

The high occupancy levels over the past months at the hotels, have lead many of the workers to fight for the hotel to continue open, according to UGT.

All the workers, whether or not they have agreed to the plan, will be taken on by Nortia, although the court can request that their contract with the branch of Aifos running the hotels be terminated.

The administrators of the company have issued a certificate which guarantees that employees who have adhered to the redundancy plan can obtain up to 150 days pay from the Salary Guarantee Fund.

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