Luxury watch snatchers kicked out of Spain’s Mallorca

TWO Italians who stole a €35,000 watch from a tourist in Palma have been kicked out of Mallorca.
The duo, aged 26 and 27, agreed to be expelled from the island for a period of five years rather than serve three years and nine months behind bars for the theft. They must also pay a €1,440 fine.
The Italians flew out of Mallorca to Barcelona on Wednesday under the guard of National Police officers.
The trial had been held in a Pama court a day earlier. Speaking via videoconference from Palma prison, the defendants pleaded guilty to robbery with violence, inflicting minor injuries and falsification of official documents.
The robbery took place on an August afternoon last year. The thieves entered Palma’s Plaza del Mercat on a rented Vespa, where they came across the tourist with their family.
One of the thieves went up behind the victim and grabbed the Patek Philippe watch, then fled back to his partner in crime on the moped.
Police arrested the two members of the so-called Rolex gang a few days later. A search of the Playa de Palma hotel room where they were staying led to the discovery of a false ceiling in the bathroom, behind which officers found fake passports and driving licences made by a third crook.
They also found the stolen Patek Philippe.