Marbella pair under arrest for posing as maintenance workers to steal copper cables

Crime

The detainees tried to flee when the police caught them in an underground chamber and the telecommunications company refuted their alibi

Irene Quirante

The Marbella Local Police arrested two people on suspicion of posing as maintenance workers and cordoning off part of a street while attempting to steal copper cables from a telecommunications network in broad daylight.

The suspects were caught on Saturday (20 June) morning on Avenida Ricardo Soriano after an engineer from the telecommunications company in question alerted the Local Police.

He reported seeing two men working inside one of the company's underground cable chambers despite knowing that no authorised works had been scheduled at the site. He also warned the police that several similar copper thefts had recently been reported elsewhere in the town.

When the police arrived, they found traffic cones surrounding the chamber, giving the impression that legitimate maintenance work was under way.

A van with its side door open was parked nearby, alongside an angle grinder, while the two men were inside the underground access chamber.

As soon as they spotted the police, the pair climbed out, removed the traffic cones and closed the chamber cover before attempting to leave. The police stopped them for identification.

The men claimed they worked for a subcontractor and were cleaning the underground duct. According to police sources, they said they were leaving because the chamber had flooded and they could not continue their work. They also provided the name of the company they claimed to represent.

The telecommunications engineer, however, confirmed that the company mentioned by the suspects had not been contracted to carry out work in the area.

The police also established that the van they were using was registered to the same individual linked to a previous copper theft in Marbella.

Firefighters were called in to inspect the underground infrastructure, where they discovered freshly cut copper cables. One of the main cable bundles had already been secured to a chain, apparently ready to be pulled out using a mechanical winch.

CCTV footage later showed that the suspects had previously entered another cable chamber around 200 metres away. Investigators found that cables there had likewise been cut in preparation for being dragged out from the second location.

The telecommunications company estimates that the damage caused to both installations is worth around 10,000 euros.

The arrests come less than two weeks after a major outage on 11 June disrupted telephone services in Marbella and Estepona following another large-scale copper cable theft. The police are investigating whether the incidents are connected.

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