Arrested in Barcelona the leader of the Lujo Casa macro-scam after nine months on the run

PalmaThe Civil Guard arrested Carlos García Roldán in Barcelona this Thursday, known as Charly and considered the leader of the Lujo Casa real estate macro-scam, after nine months on the run. The Balearic Court sentenced him last December to 14 years and nine months in prison for a scheme that defrauded about 3.3 million euros from more than 230 people with about thirty real estate developments that were never built.

Officers located him at his mother's home, the same place where he was when they notified him of the conviction, as legal sources explained to Europa Press. Units from the Balearic Civil Guard Command traveled to Barcelona to carry out the arrest.

The Second Section of the Provincial Court had issued last December an order for search, arrest, and imprisonment against García Roldán. He will now be at the disposal of the duty court corresponding to the municipality where he was arrested. The sources consulted consider it predictable that his provisional imprisonment will be ordered.

The arrest puts an end to a flight that began the day after he was notified of the sentence. García Roldán was supposed to appear before the Court in Palma at a hearing intended to review whether the precautionary measures imposed on him should be tightened while the sentence was not final. Until then, he was on provisional release.

Charly, however, did not show up for the summons. He alleged that he was outside of Mallorca and that he had not found any flight to travel to Palma. From that moment on, his trail was lost and the Court ordered his search and capture.

The second flight

It is not the first time that García Roldán has tried to evade the action of justice. During the Civil Guard investigation that uncovered the macro-fraud, he fled to Colombia, where he spent some time. Finally, he was extradited to be able to continue the judicial proceedings and sit in the dock.

The Balearic Court sentenced him as the perpetrator of a continuous crime of aggravated fraud and the crimes of belonging to a criminal group, punishable insolvency, and money laundering. The sentence also imposed prison terms on two of his main partners.

The judicial resolution considers it proven that Lujo Casa massively offered off-plan homes without having the land, licenses, financing, or the necessary guarantees to build them. In many cases, the company was not the registered owner of the advertised plots and only had purchase option contracts that it did not even reach the point of executing.

The company had also not obtained the new construction licenses. In some developments, it only had basic projects and had not contracted bank guarantees or surety insurance to protect the money advanced by buyers. The amounts delivered by clients were not deposited into separate special accounts, as required by regulations.

Homes that never existed

The scheme projected an image of solvency through offices open to the public, advertisements on real estate portals, signs installed on the lots, and contractual documentation. This appearance led hundreds of buyers to advance money to acquire homes that, in many cases, were intended to become their habitual residence.

According to the ruling, Lujo Casa already had a negative net worth in 2016, but it continued to promote about thirty projects with an economic volume that was absolutely disproportionate to its resources and its financing capacity.

The Court concludes that those responsible knew from the beginning about the unviability of the developments and that they repeated the same system for years: announcing future homes, hiding that they did not have the necessary means to build them, and capturing the down payments from buyers. The macro-scam left more than 230 victims and an estimated economic damage of about 3.3 million euros.