The National Police have dismantled an organisation that had been earning huge profits selling rubble as copper, arresting fifteen people into the bargain.
The organisation prepared cubes of waste materials in a warehouse in Barcelona and then coated them with a thin layer of copper to make them look like solid blocks of metal. Every week for eighteen months the organisation sold between 80 and 120 tons of the fake copper, netting them up to €320,000 per month.
Three workers at a foundry were found to have colluded with the organisation to approve the shipments for weight and quality of the metal.
The detainees, four from Huelva and eleven from Sabadell and Barberá del Vallés in Barcelona, are charged with crimes against public finances, fraud, forgery, money laundering and illegal possession of weapons.