They dedicated themselves to 'squatting' uninhabited homes, changing the locks and then renting them to people with limited economic resources, many of them immigrants or people with minors in their care.

If they stopped paying the monthly payments, they threatened them.

They exhorted them to pay whatever, even stealing: "If you go to the police we will beat you up, you don't know what awaits you; and if you don't have money, you steal it, find your life."

In less than a year they repeated the

modus operandi in

at least 15 homes in Palma, in suburban neighborhoods and tourist areas such as El Arenal or Cala Major.

The network offered the illegal rentals in advertisements placed on lampposts, bars or phone booths, profiting and enforcing the law of the clan.

According to the police investigation, they had members dedicated to the collection and distributed the tasks: some of them were dedicated to making modifications in the buildings to defraud the water and electricity and material was seized from them to make the 'hookups'.

They charged in rent for the water and electricity they obtained illegally.

One of them was even known as 'the locksmith'.

Another specialized in kicking doors and breaking locks.

And another made pamphlets by hand.

The Provincial Court of Palma judges this week 23 members of the 'Los Peludos' gang, which the Prosecutor's Office accuses of having integrated a structured and organized criminal group to perpetrate five crimes between October 2013 and May 2014.

Among them, the Prosecutor's Office asks that they be convicted of criminal organization, a crime that has few legal precedents in the gangs dedicated to the 'squatting' of houses in the Balearic Islands but that was already imposed in a pioneering sentence in the Islands. last May.

PRECEDING

This is the first major trial in Mallorca of a gang organized to 'squat'.

But there are some similar precedents.

The Criminal Court number 4 of Palma then sentenced four people between 24 and 47 years of age for being part of a "criminal group" by usurping a recently built residential building in Palma and asking the developer for a 'ransom' of 8,000 euros to abandon it .

In that case they had even organized the simulation that they lived with children (with photos and false children's drawings of decoration) to make the eviction more difficult.

In a trial scheduled for the whole week, the 23 defendants from the Los Peludos clan now face penalties that could reach 14 years in prison for having acted in an alleged criminal manner, usurping homes that in most cases belonged to banks. .

They intimidated the tenants and are also attributed the alleged commission of coercion and illegal possession of weapons.

Semi-automatic pistols, katanas, knives and ammunition were seized from some of the members.

At the start of the trial, the defendants have refused to testify.

Their defenses maintain that the tenants knew they were in 'squatted' flats.

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