In a sting operation carried out by the Polizia di Stato and their Spanish counterparts, the Spanish National Police, Marbella’s greatest safe cracker has been arrested in Rome.
The detainee’s preferred technique is the ‘Butrón’ method, basically, drilling a big hole in the side of a safe or strongroom like something from one of the Ocean’s series of movies. His partner in crime had also been arrested in France on a charge of the attempted murder of a doorman at a club in Marbella.
The detainee, the alleged safecracker, is Álex di Francesco, who was wanted by the National Police after his cohort, Omar Nasr, was arrested in France earlier in October, according to inside sources. Investigators followed him while he carried out a series of robberies in establishments and trucks containing valuable goods.
According to the police in a press release, the man arrested in Rome had ten arrest warrants in Spain for different cases and was considered an expert burglar in the technique of oxyacetylene cutting.
Safecracker on the run arrested in spite of plastic surgery
After investigations revealed where the man was living in Rome under a false identity, he was followed to a bar he frequented and was detained on his exit. His tracking down had been delayed because he had reportedly changed his appearance through plastic surgery.
Once the fugitive’s home was located, with the collaboration of the Liaison Officer of the National Police in Italy and the Polizia di Stato, surveillance was carried out that allowed his arrest at the exit of a bar in the Italian capital, being able to verify his identity in spite of modifications in his appearance to try to go unnoticed.
According to the police, the arrest in Rome comes after his main partner was arrested in October 2023, also a fugitive from justice, in this case in the French town of Melun, for being the alleged perpetrator of an attempted homicide after shooting from his vehicle at the doormen of a nightclub in the Malaga town of Marbella.
