Walter Finch
A WEALTHY Portuguese businessman was kidnapped from his home and driven on a harrowing 1,200km journey across Spain before being left tied to a tree in Barcelona.
A local police patrol found him battered and disorientated in Collbato in the early hours of the morning, having been robbed of a total of €100,000 from numerous transactions during his ordeal.
Five members of the gang were later arrested in Torremolinos after a police investigation, with a further four in Malaga, Alicante and Sucina in Murcia.
Six of them were responsible for the kidnapping, while the other three were involved in a separate failed kidnapping of a woman in the Portuguese town of Setubal.
The victim, in his 80s, was snatched from his house in Albufeira, Portugal, by a notorious kidnap gang and forced into his own €100,000 Range Rover on August 24th.
Three men of Brazilian origin pounced on him at 11am as he was leaving his home and stuck a gun in his face, according to the victim’s testimony.
Thus began a terrifying, 20-hour road trip in which the gang sat him in the back seat and extorted all his PIN numbers and online banking details by threatening to harm his family.
They made a total of 25 bank transactions between 17 accounts at various cash machines along the way in order to withdraw as much money as they could.
The kidnappers even opened an account using his ID and a ‘selfie’ taken from the victim in which he appeared with a bruised face.
The nightmare finally ended at three in the morning on August 25 in a forest in the Catalan town of Collbato.
Investigators managed to trace the movements of the gang during the abduction through tracking the bank transactions, geolocating the mobile phone and CCTV footage.
They determined that the gang abandoned the Range Rover at Barcelona’s El Prat airport and took a taxi to Barcelona – paid for with the victim’s credit card.
They then went and bought themselves new mobile phones, also with the victim’s cash.
The three kidnappers along with another gang member were tracked and arrested while cruising through Torremolinos in a Mercedes stolen from a woman they had also attempted to abduct and extort.
This victim managed to escape before her own road trip began.
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