An operation of Civil Police of São Paulo this Wednesday (10) arrested a suspect of being an important link in the gear that moves the cell phone robberies and robberies in the capital of São Paulo.
The man was arrested in a building in Mandaqui, a neighborhood in the north zone. With him, the police found 182 cell phones, as well as equipment used to make it difficult for the cell phones to be tracked by the victims.
One of them is an exchange known as “Faraday cage”. “As soon as the cell phone is stolen, it is taken to the receiver inside this bag, which has electromagnetic shielding that prevents the device from being tracked”, explains delegate Fernando Santiago, one of those responsible for the operation.
Four devices known as “jammers” were also found in the suspect’s apartment, used to block cell phone and internet signals in the building where the gang member lived.
“There were several complaints from residents of the building about connection problems. When the operator checked the problem, they couldn’t find the reason for the connection failure. The resident on the top floor, for example, was practically never able to connect to the internet, but he didn’t know why”, explains Santiago.
The equipment did not always work, however. “We managed to find police reports that showed the location of cell phones exactly in this building. And that’s how we got to it,” says Santiago.
According to police, the arrested man, whose name was not revealed, was one of the links in the parallel cell phone marketfueled by gangs who operate on the streets stealing and stealing devices. The groups operate on bicycles or by breaking car windows and stealing equipment from the occupants.
“Today we can say that we reached the top of this criminal mountain. The next phase will be called ‘avalanche’, because we are going to catch everyone who is on this criminal mountain”, says delegate Bruno Calvo, from Deic (State Department of Criminal Investigations).
The investigations showed that there was also a scale of values by type of device. Those with greater potential to generate profits are traded for larger amounts. The police suspect that this parallel market moves millions of reais per month only in the city of São Paulo. According to police officers, the suspect received around a thousand cell phones a week.
“What makes the cell phone worth more (in the parallel market) is the value of the bills that can be subtracted by hackers. There are cell phones with ‘premium’ bank accounts that are commercially negotiated for higher values”, says delegate Bruno Calvo, from Deic.
According to him, some of the devices are passed on to stores that then resell the parts. One of these stores was also the target of a search and seizure warrant this Wednesday. “The most expensive models that cannot be unlocked in Brazil are taken to countries where it is possible to do so”, he says.
Police officers also found 42 wedding rings in the apartment. “The focus is on the cell phone, but often, during robberies, everything that is on the victim is taken. The gangs win from several sides”, says Calvo.
The theft of cell phones has been one of the focuses of criticism of the governor’s administration Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicans). Throughout the city, according to Public Security Secretariat37,216 incidents of robberies and cell phone thefts were recorded in the first quarter of this year, with 24,183 robberies and 13,033 robberies.
