Sincelejo: billionaire robbery of hotel owners wearing Sijin costumes

An unusual theft took place during the early morning of Tuesday, April 5, in a room at Hotel Panorama, in the municipality of Sincelejo (Sucre). The criminals stole approximately 600 million pesos worth of property. To do this, they used the old deception of disguising themselves as police officers.

The robbery reportedly began to take place at four o'clock in the morning of Monday, April 4, when the three alleged persons involved in this theft stayed in the same hotel, located between Las Peñitas Avenue and El Cauca Street, apparently with the theft plan already drawn up.

At three o'clock on Tuesday morning, according to one of the versions given by a worker to the local media outlet El Meridiano, the three criminals gagged the orderly and the hotel receptionist. Then, they entered through the window into one of the rooms, where the owners of the accommodation rested: Mr. Luis Arroyo Vitola, 76, and his wife.

After awakening their victims, they identified themselves as agents of the Judicial Police and Intelligence Section (Sijin) and assured that they were carrying out a raid on the spot, on the grounds that they were after a drug shipment.

Although the request seemed strange to Arroyo Vitola, who is a well-known businessman in that city, he accepted that the criminals advance the alleged break-in. When they had settled in, Arroyo Vitola and his wife were gunned and gagged.

With the victims immobilized, the criminals searched the entire room to find valuables. They collected a loot of gold jewels and cash, worth 600 million pesos, and escaped in a private car, also taking with them the device that stores the security camera footage.

Although the criminals also took the high-end cell phones owned by Arroyo and his wife, they were discarded and found a few meters from the Hotel Panorama. Authorities hypothesize that they did this to prevent the authorities from being able to track your location using the GPS system.

According to statements to Blu Radio by Colonel Carlos Andrés Correa, the commander of the Sucre Police, the investigation indicates that the perpetrators would have some relationship of friendship or trust with Arroyo's family, since they knew that the elderly couple kept a large sum of money in this room.

In addition, he said that the whereabouts of those responsible have not yet been found, but the authorities are behind them.

According to the most recent cost-of-living figures from the National Administrative Department of Statistics, the capital of Sucre is one of the least expensive cities in the country to live .

For March 2022, the annual change in CPI was 8.53%, according to the same body, that is, 7.02 percentage points higher than that reported in the same period last year, when it was 1.51%. According to the most recent reports from that authority, Medellin is the city with the highest cost of living in the country at 1.46%, then Valledupar with 1.35% and Cucuta with 1.34%. Bogotá, on the other hand, is the city that would have been least affected by this number, reaching 0.76%, above Pereira with 0.77% and Sincelejo with 0.89%.

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