Organised criminal gangs from Bulgaria, Colombia and Nigeria are flooding the Costa del Sol with counterfeit Euro notes

Organised criminal gangs from Bulgaria, Colombia and Nigeria are flooding the Costa del Sol with counterfeit Euro notes, Spanish media reported Sunday.Most of the gangs involved are from these three countries, according to the head of the Financial Crime section of the UDEV specialist police unit, Juan Titos. He is quoted in the La Opinion de Málaga newspaper saying that the notes are put into circulation, bit by bit, and that his unit has broken up half a dozen gangs over the last few months. The false notes are usually passed on to a series of people who spend the notes at face value, having previously purchased them in bulk for as little as 5% of that amo...

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: "Britain has become the Costa del Crime for foreign criminals who lose themselves in Britain knowing that they are unlikely to be deported when conv

"Britain has become the Costa del Crime for foreign criminals who lose themselves in Britain knowing that they are unlikely to be deported when convicted of serious crim...

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Spain was also named the worst country for overseas credit-card theft

The Spanish authorities have warned that you should also be alert to the availability and possible use of 'date rape' and other drugs, including 'GBH' and liquid ecstasy," the Foreign Office says on its website. "You should purchase your own drinks and keep sight of them at all times to make sure they cannot be spiked."Spain was also named the worst country for overseas credit-card theft in 2005. Of the 32,123 credit and debit cards stolen from British holidaymakers last year, more than a quarter (8,250) were snatched from people holidaying in Spa...

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The increasing number of violent assaults in Benidorm has set back attempts by the Spanish resort to attract a more upmarket clientele.

This week a British holidaymaker was paralysed and his friend left unconscious after a fight outside a nightclub in the so-called British quarter. James Edward and Mark Bell, both 20, were found unconscious following the street brawl with a 20-strong gang in the early hours of the morning. Mr Edward was this week in intensive care at the Alicante General Hospital and paralysed from the neck down following a heavy blow to his back. In July Graham Heggie, a 27-year-old Scottish holidaymaker, died in the town after a brawl just yards from the apartment in which he was staying. Earlier in the year, Alex Prosser, 73, another British visitor, suffered a fractured skull after being mugged in Benidorm for just £28.The resort's tourism authorities had hoped that this sort of violence was a thing of...

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Ronnie Knight

Once the UK’s most wanted man, Ronnie Knight was imprisoned for his part in the 1983 London Security Express heist of £7 million (£26 million today). Married for years to TV star Barbara Windsor, he divided his time between the celebrity party circuit in London and exile in the sun-drenched, luxurious surroundings of the Spanish coastal strip known as the Costa del Cri...

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MANCHESTER computer expert has told of his terror after he was gunned down in a gangland-style shooting in Spain.

Mark Stuttard was visiting his sister Karen and her doctor husband at their home on the Costa del Sol when they were targeted by two hitmen. One of the men shot Mr Stuttard's Italian brother-in-law Umberto Borsani twice in the legs at close range as he unloaded suitcases from his car. The gunman then walked up to Mark and shot him twice in the leg. Both men have been treated in hospital.Police believe the men were the victims of mistaken identity. Mr Stuttard, 31, said the attack took place within hours of him flying to visit his sister in Nueva Andalucia, near Marbella, to celebrate her 41st birthday. Karen has settled down in the area and runs a GP clinic with her 41-year-old husband. Mr Stuttard said: "When we got there I saw two men standing in the parking area talking. Bangs "Umberto...

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"It's the new Costa del Crime,"

he says, thanks to the numbers of Brits fleeing the law at home for lives of lucrative, beachfront liberty in Thailand. "You see them all there in their singlets and tattoos. It's a perfect place for them. What the Thais must think of British people I have no idea." Pattaya gained its reputation as a place where sex was for sale during the Vietnam war when US servicemen would come to Thailand for "rest and rehabilitation". The trade continued after the war, with western tourists filling the vacuum. Now everything sexual is available. Young women dressed as schoolgirls beckon customers into Classroom-A-Go-Go (motto: "study hard") and young men in white T-shirts and shorts follow suit at Narcissus. There are women dressed as secretaries at a bar called the Office Girls and encased in silver...

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Crimestoppers confirms the arrest in Spain of Anthony David Simmons

Crimestoppers confirms the arrest in Spain of Anthony David Simmons, who was featured on our Most Wanted website and was wanted in connection with the importation of 568kg of cannabis resin from Spain to the UK. The offence occurred on 7thNovember 2004. This arrest is the first success of Crimestoppers ‘Operation Captura’ campaign, to find wanted UK criminals living in the Costa del Sol and bring them back to the UK’s criminal justice system. Simmons was arrested by the Spanish authorities on 3December in Spain. Crimestoppers has no more details on the circumstances of his arrest and will not release any further information to protect the anonymity of our callers. As a result of this success Crimestoppers today announces details of 10 new appeals for wanted criminals in Spain.Mick Laurie,...

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Three tonnes of hash were intercepted by police when the raided a yacht in Alicante

Three tonnes of hash were intercepted by police when the raided a yacht in Alicante. Three Spanish men along with three Russians were arrested by the Guardia Civil on their luxury yacht near the main port. Police had used a fake kidnapping to question a fourth Russian, and received information which led to the intercepti...

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the gang were using children under 18 to transport the drugs up and down the region.

Police in Orihuela have broken up a drug distribution operation. Sadly, the gang were using children under 18 to transport the drugs up and down the region. In the raid, 9kg of hash and nearly 2kg of cocaine were seized, along with 20,000€ of ca...

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sex related attacks have increased by 40% in the last 4 years

A judge in Alicante has noted that sex related attacks have increased by 40% in the last 4 years. The numbers are supported by the Guardia Civil who estimate that they deal with 2 sex attacks per d...

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The Costa Blanca has seen a number of crime incidents, some serious. However, it appears that 75% of the crime is committed by non-EU foregners.

In Tibi, police broke up a running street fight between a gang from Alicante and local residents. Some people are saying that the gang had targeted the fiesta and is know for its violence.Since the discovery of the bodies of 2 Irish criminals, found buried in 2 metres of concrete, it has emerged that the Irish Police have a near permanent presence on the Costa Blanca. They are continuing to assist Spainish Police to identify and prosecute criminals from Ireland who have fled to Spain. It is suspected that some of the criminals have a paramilitary history. A British man has been jailed in Benidorm for 27 months after having been convicted of serious fraud. Mark Acklom had defrauded an Asian businessman out of €18million (£13million) in a property scam. He was led to believe he was investing...

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Most Wanted on the Costas

James HurleyJailed for life over the shooting murder of Hertfordshire constable Frank Mason during a robbery. Escaped in 1994 during a prison transfer.Christopher Guest MoreWanted over the kidnap and murder of Brian Waters at Burnt House Farm, Tabley, Cheshire, in July 2003.Clifford Michael Hobbs Escaped in a June 2003 prison van ambush en route from Brixton prison to court over a £1.25m security van heist. A guard was shot in the escape.Mark GottfriedWanted over the supply of 5kg of cocaine in November 2000.Ronald William PriestleyWanted over counterfeit currency totalling £4.2...

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The Costa is no longer the criminal haven it was deemed to be in the sixties and seventies.

Crime? There are many misapprehensions about the Costa del Sol. First the criminal haven that stuck some thirty years ago. The Costa is no longer the criminal haven it was deemed to be in the sixties and seventies. There are criminals everywhere but you don't have to mingle with them any more than you would in your own crime-riddled country. Most residents say that they feel safer here than they do back home. Petty crime exists but it can be minimised with sensible precautio...

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WANTED

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Two held in bizzare plan to kidnap archbishop here

Agents said at the time that the gang of kidnappers assisted Araya with the prison break in which a guard was murdered. Investigators figure that vehicles awaited the inmates outside the prison. The gang was involved in high stakes kidnappings, mostly of businessmen. Unlike other criminals, they accepted property and cars as part payment of the ransom, officials said. Police attribute at leastfour separate cases of kidnapping to the gang. In most cases the victims were held about a week.Investigators are believed to have found out about the plan to grab Barrantes when they were investigating a recent kidnapping involving a businessman.Two more suspects still are at large, so investigators are being careful about what they say. The only official word was a brief statement from the press office...

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Crimestoppers

"Costa del Crime" since the 1970s, because hundreds of wanted British criminals are thought to be living there. The charity Crimestoppers has set up a hotline to help UK police forces track them down. Crimestoppers is now operating outside the UK for the first time and hundreds of people have called its free phone line. Information given to Crimestoppers last month has already led directly to the arrest of one man, a suspect on the most wanted list issued by British police, on 3 Decem...

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The bodies of the timeshare operators Billy and Flo Robinson were discovered next to their luxury cars in Tenerife in 2005.

The gunmen lay in wait as their prey parked, before riddling the car with bullets. Two of the passengers were killed immediately; the third died later in hospital. The dead, all Colombians, were the latest victims of gangland hits on the Costa del Sol in the past three weeks, raising fears that a new crime war has erupted in a part of Spain traditionally popular with British expatriates. These gangsters, say experts, are not looking for a quiet life. Colombian and Eastern European, they are ready to spill blood in their ruthless pursuit of profits from the multimillion-pound cocaine trade. The resulting tit-for-tat killings mean that the days of the so-called Costa del Crime, when retired British underworld “faces” kept a low profile, are over. Last month an Estonian man was shot in the head...

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New Cosmetic Surgeon for Marbella

doctor Jørgen (or Jorn) Ege Siana and he's a plastic surgeon (infamous for his failed penis-enlargement operations !)... Danish papers have covered his cases extensively, but I haven't found any international coverage.Consider this a warning - this you don't want this guy to redocorate your body...including your private parts...

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“Operation Capture”

In order to alert the thousands of British expatriates in southern Spain of the possibility that their nextdoor neighbour being a wanted criminal, the UK’s crime-fighting charity, Crimestoppers, has launched “Operation Capture”. The association hopes to gain the collaboration of local residents in its search for suspects in a number of cases ranging from murder and kidnapping, to drugs trafficking and fraud.During the launch of the campaign on Tuesday, the director of Crimestoppers, Dave Cording, explained that the Costa del Sol has “traditionally” been an area chosen by fugitives and that they believed that “the majority (of the most wanted suspects) are here”. Nevertheless Cording added that the suspects have “most probably changed their identity and their appearance”.“Operation Capture”...

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armed gangs from Albania, Kosovo and the former Soviet republics

armed gangs from Albania, Kosovo and the former Soviet republics. Police in Almeria arrested 13 suspected gangsters accused of laundering £75 million from extortion, drug running and contract killings in buying hotels, property investments and art treasur...

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smuggled more than £300 million worth of cocaine into Britain.

Michael Walsh, 62, on the run from Britain since March 2000 for drug trafficking, was tracked down to his villa on the Costa del Sol, but only after being spotted with other traffickers. In March police tracked down Brian Wright, who is alleged to have smuggled more than £300 million worth of cocaine into Brita...

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Costa Nostra

Three Britons were arrested in an undercover operation around Marbella, to smash Europe’s biggest cocaine smuggling ring. The operation prompted many in Spain to call for a clean-up of what locals are calling the Costa Nos...

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There have been six murders on the Costa in the past two years

There have been six murders on the Costa in the past two years. Three of the victims have been British or Irish, and Britons are also suspected of involvement in two other murders. The year before, in one three-month period, eight suspected drug traffickers were murdered. The victims were French, Colombian, Algerian and Spanish. Two were gunned down in restaurants in a throwback to Chicago of the Thirti...

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Mickey Green

known as the Pimpernel, a multi-millionaire criminal who has been on the run for more than 20 years and is believed to be one of the most senior figures in the British underworld. A successful armed robber during the Seventies when he ran a gang called the 'Wembley Mob', Green, now 60, moved into the drug trade after leaving prison in the early Eighties. He now owns bars and property in Wembley, West Hampstead, Dublin and Marbella. In the past he has had a string of detectives on his payroll and has had close connections with the notorious Adams family, the powerful London gangsters. He was named Europe's most wanted drugs baron and nicknamed 'the octopus' for the tentacles of his ever-expanding network.But Green has always stayed one step ahead of the law, leaving behind speedboats, yachts,...

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seven people were killed in eight days

Last year seven people were killed in eight days of street shootings in Madrid as war broke out between local and Colombian drug dealers. (The way the deal normally works with British and Spanish gangsters is they leave each other alone as long as they are only supplying to their own market...

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Glaswegian Ricky Hayes

Glaswegian Ricky Hayes was arrested in nearby Fuengirola after Spanish police seized cannabis resin and cocaine in a major bust. In March, Spanish police seized a Venezuelan fishing boat just off the coast of the Canary Islands. The vessel was carrying 76 bundles of high-quality Colombian cocaine worth around £250 million. Spanish customs officials believe that some of the drugs would have been offloaded at sea onto smaller boats which would in turn have transfer...

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35 outstanding extradition requests

there are 35 outstanding extradition requests, and British detectives estimate there are more than 230 known criminals who would be arrested on sight if they were to set foot again in the UK. Gangland figure Kenneth Noye hid in Spain for three years after stabbing Stephen Cameron to death on a slip road of the M25 in Kent in 19...

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Britain has 230 known criminals sheltering in Spain

The Costa del Sol has seen an upsurge in violent crime in recent years with British, Irish and Russian gangs vying with local Spanish criminals for command of the lucrative drugs trade. Morocco is only 40 miles away across the southern horizon. The profit margins for smuggling Moroccan cannabis and Colombian cocaine are too tempting for many ex-pats, even when threatened with imprisonment or death. A Briton was arrested in April this year in nearby Fuengirola after a consignment of cannabis and cocaine was discovered. And drug dealer Scott Bradfield, from London, was murdered in October 2001. His limbs were found in a suitcase on wasteland near Torremolinos in December and his head and torso were discovered in another case nearby. SupergrassMr Bradfield was the prime suspect in the murder...

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