They judge a group of "artisans" of keys who stole from houses taking advantage of holidays and vacations

BarcelonaA group of six specialists in home burglaries will sit on the dock at the Barcelona Court starting this Monday. They are accused of a dozen raids in which they allegedly used different techniques to open doors, leaving almost no trace. According to the Public Prosecutor's description, they operated with a "scrupulous division of roles" where some were "experts in selecting targets" by marking or watching apartments, others opened doors with specific machinery or by creating false keys, acting "like a kind of craftsman," and finally there was an "operational group" that entered the home.

The six defendants face sentences ranging from two to 33 years, and the prosecutor is requesting the highest sentence for the group leader, whom they hold responsible for all the robberies and who allegedly had the role of waiting outside with the car to help the others flee with the loot. In all cases, there would have been more people involved, but they have never been located.

All the robberies, which will be tried over seven sessions until May 19, were committed between August 2023 and May 2024 in Barcelona or other towns in the same province, including Puig-reig and Avià, in Berguedà. Normally, they would take jewelry and valuable objects which they exchanged for money as soon as possible, but they also took cash when they found it. In the house where they obtained the largest loot, they took 85,000 euros from a safe that they opened with a grinder. In total, the money the Public Prosecutor's Office is asking to be returned to the victims amounts to 116,700 euros. In addition to tools for forcing doors or counterfeiting keys, they had tools to quickly distinguish gold from costume jewelry and to assess the quality of diamonds.

Choosing doors and making keys

According to the prosecutor in the indictment, the group "meticulously selected their targets" by focusing on the building: how many apartments there were on each floor, if there were cameras, and what the tenants' schedules were. Once they had chosen an apartment, they would mark the door. Sometimes they did this with a strip of transparent plastic wedged between the door leaf and the frame, and in other cases with a strand of glue. Both systems make it possible to know if the door has been opened, because the plastic has fallen off or the glue strand has broken, or if no one has entered or left the apartment. In fact, the vast majority of robberies occurred on weekends, holidays, or during vacation periods.

Once a target was chosen, the rest of the group would be activated, equipped with tools to open locks using "highly varied" techniques depending on the type of lock. In some cases, they also made false keys, which "requires a high degree of specialization," the prosecutor emphasizes. They left no marks or damage on the door, and could leave the door locked as if the owner had closed it by turning the original key. To make them, they had specific machinery such as upright drills, large-caliber grinders, and precision files to modify screwdrivers to adapt them to the locks they wanted to open.

Different methods for opening locks

On the other hand, other times it was enough with the "X-ray method": they slid a rigid plastic to the height of the lock and with some pushes they managed to open the door. With this technique they did not leave damage to the door and the robbery could go unnoticed at first. This was only useful to them when the door was closed "suddenly", without locking it, as for example in entrances.

The group also made a lot of use of the "parrot's beak" technique, in which they removed the lock's embellisher to leave the cylinder protruding and break it with the tool that gives its name to this method. Finally, with a screwdriver, they activated the lock's bolt mechanism to open the door.

A third way of opening doors they used is the technique of bumping, with which they could open the door without forcing the lock or causing significant damage. They did this with manipulated keys that they had created especially for this purpose, called "bump". The main characteristic of this type of key is that all the teeth would have the same height, and all the pins would move at the same time by hitting the key with a hammer or a screwdriver. The blows could even be made with a shoe, so that the accused saved themselves from carrying any tool that could incriminate them.