“La Gata” fell, a key player in the “escruche industry”

Nobody calls Miguel by his name. For many years now he only responds when they call him "la Gata". Lizárraga is much more than his surname. It is the brand to fire of the record of him. Last Friday he turned 60, but he is still far from being able to write his memoir completely. On Monday he arrived in San Miguel de Tucumán surrounded by police. The day before, he had been trapped in his house in the Patricios neighborhood, in the city of Córdoba.

"Born and raised in Tucumán, he became a professional in Córdoba," says someone who knows him like few others. In 1981, already 18 years old, he had his first fall in what throughout his life would end up becoming his specialty: the "escruches", as it is called in police and criminal jargon those robberies without physical violence, when criminals enter a home taking advantage of the fact that their owners have just left for a moment.

That time, he was caught after entering a charming house in Yerba Buena, a residential municipality located on the outskirts of San Miguel de Tucumán, looking for money and jewelry.

He was housed in the Villa Urquiza prison, where he soon made good friends with other gangsters from more cartels. In 1986, he and Enrique “Prode” Correa pretended to be sick and managed to be transferred to the main public hospital in the city, Padilla. From there they escaped without major problems, since all the dirty work was done by four accomplices who were in the street and who one morning entered the health center at gunpoint and forced the prison guards to cease any attempt to oppose them.

Correa was nicknamed “Prode” because a police bullet had left him with 13 stitches.

The six were fugitives for 12 days, until March 22, 1986, when "Prode" and another of the accomplices were caught by the Tucuman Police in the town of Los Puestos while trying to escape to Río Hondo, in Santiago del Estero.

The rest, including “la Gata”, managed to flee. But on a local road they were intercepted by the "Comando Atila", a parapolice group that was led by Commissioner Mario Oscar "el Malevo" Ferreyra, at which time one of the members of the gang, Víctor "Mocho" González, ended up shot four times in the chest.

Since then, in Tucumán they assure that "la Gata" Lizárraga is a survivor of the "Malevo". The strong commissioner with wide sideburns, black mustache, open shirt, boots and Panama hat would go down in history over the years due to the multiple accusations against him for crimes against humanity during the last military dictatorship and later, already in democracy. In the 1990s, his suicide shocked the country, as he shot himself in front of a Crónica TV camera.

But let's go back to that March of 1986. When "Prode" was arrested, the lieutenants of "Malevo" immediately loaded him on a cell phone to transfer him back to the capital of Tucuman, a trip that never materialized. In the middle of the road, "Prode" was shot 14 times in the back. His corpse, handcuffed with his hands behind his back, ended up unmasking the unusual version that Commissioner Ferreyra gave at that time: after puncturing a wheel, Correa managed to open the door of the cell phone and tried to flee in the middle of a "confrontation" with the police. Tucumans.

The massacre of the "Comando Atila" made "la Gata" Lizárraga forget for a long time about returning to her native Tucumán. Before ending up in Córdoba, a province that he adopted as his small payment, he traveled to different parts of the country and it is known that he also stamped his passport in Brazil (where he would have been detained), in Italy, in France and in Spain. He was part of that first legion of Cordovan criminals who began to cross the Atlantic with the intention of stealing from the so-called "First World", as was always suspected, but never proven.

In Buenos Aires, he was linked to the mythical band of Luis "el Gordo" Valor, according to those who now remember the biography of "la Gata", until his roots in Córdoba finally began to germinate. The old hounds of Robbery and Theft remember it perfectly. A thousand times suspected, his record appears almost unblemished: after that conviction at age 18, he only had one case for theft in the Cordoba city of San Francisco in 2009. There are nicknames that explain a lifetime.

Partners in crime

The wife of "la Gata" is the sister of Jorge Oscar "la Fiorela" López, another experienced thief with a reputation for being tough, linked to resounding criminal heists in which he knew he had Ricardo Rolando "el Ciego" Hidalgo, one of the criminals, as an accomplice. criminals killed in the resounding assault on the Rondeau street finance company, in Nueva Córdoba, in 2018.

Those policemen remember what happened more than two decades ago, when "la Gata" was surprised in the city of Córdoba in the middle of a very particular raid: in the house of a "healer", in the middle of a ceremony to "bless" a weapon.

But we must not forget that what happened to Lizárraga was usually the “escruches”, robberies planned in detail without physical violence. This specialty explains how he managed to avoid jail for so many years.

Despite the fact that he established himself in Córdoba, Lizárraga never lost the link with his native province. It is suspected that in recent times he forged an alliance with the Caro clan, a family from Tucumán whose rapid economic rise put it at the center of the police gaze. It is believed that between the two there was an exchange of data between Córdoba and Tucumán so that each one could commit crimes in foreign territory and thus be able to quickly escape any close suspicion.

The clues of the patents

Now, when a police squad from Tucumán traveled to Córdoba to catch him last weekend, a new chapter in his criminal history began to be written, which in Tucumán already has its own title: “the escruche industry.”

This is a complex case that prosecutor Diego López Ávila is carrying out. Specialized in crimes against property, the judicial officer gathered about 40 robberies that have occurred in recent months in San Miguel de Tucumán and surroundings, to try to find a common pattern.

Among the multiple variables, it was found that in several cases the criminals moved in vehicles located in the city of Córdoba, as they could see from the filmed records of the license plates of the suspects.

That thread began to pull every time, especially when one of the victims was the retired criminal judge Pedro Roldán Vázquez, with an extensive career in the Judiciary of that province. There is talk of a loot of about 35 thousand dollars. Before, on March 22 last at dawn, thieves entered three homes in the country La Arbolada and ended up taking a millionaire booty. The amount that was stolen from another address, on the 8th of this month, on Pellegrini Avenue at 100 in that city, was also very important. "Escruches" planned in detail. In total, the subtracted number has too many zeros.

The prosecutor has not yet rounded up that all these cases are related to each other, but he warns that there is a similar pattern: they canceled the alarms and the filming cameras, stole large sums of money and moved in cars whose patents revealed that they were based in Córdoba.

López Ávila charged Lizárraga with the crimes of qualified robbery for burglary and attack and aggravated resistance to authority. And it was resolved that he remain in preventive detention for at least 120 days.

The researchers from Tucumán traveled twice to the city of Córdoba. Earlier this month, a delegation toured different neighborhoods and, under the strictest secrecy, identified a series of addresses. On Thursday the 13th, meanwhile, another group of police officers arrived. Already in contact with their Cordovan counterparts, to whom they asked for collaboration, they planned a series of simultaneous operations for Sunday very early.

"La Gata" was trapped in his house in Medina y Torres at 3700, Patricios neighborhood. His son, Juan de Dios López, was also searched for without success.

They also raided 200 meters away, in a house on Ramón Aberastain Oro at 2400, to look for another of the suspects, Luis Ricardo Carrera, who was no longer there. Cordovan informants remember him as a former lieutenant of “la Gata”. Mauricio Ezequiel “Lito” Lencinas, more closely linked to the son of the main defendant, who was planned to be arrested on Rodolfo Walsh street, in the Liceo neighborhood area, in the northeast of the city of Córdoba, was also not found.

But there are several more fugitives in the case, according to the sources consulted. Among them is the brother of “la Gata”, Néstor “Tuta” Lizárraga.

In the same Liceo neighborhood, Tucuman police raided the home of Marcos Daniel González. Although his situation in the framework of this investigation is not yet defined, the mere mention of his name generated more than alerts among the Cordovan researchers.

On March 17, 2017, González was arrested when he arrived at his house from the First Section of the Liceo neighborhood. On the sidewalk, a Volkswagen Amarok pickup truck and a high-end Alfa Romeo car were parked.

A Buenos Aires prosecutor had requested his arrest. He was accused of being a member of the gang of "Zurdo" Ramón Antonio Asís (45), persecuted for grand robberies of the rich and famous in the Nordelta area, in the Tigre district of Buenos Aires, a cause for which they were finally convicted and have already recovered the freedom.

According to that investigation, he, along with two other accomplices, had rented a luxurious house in the Los Castores private neighborhood, in Nordelta, where they set up their "operations center." In this way, nobody imagined that the new neighbors who organized lavish meetings in which champagne abounded and who moved around the neighborhood in expensive BMW 330, 130 and X6, an Audi TT or a Toyota SW4 were the same as at night, when the owners were not there, they entered those mansions, opened safes and took dollars, pesos and a lot of gold. An internal camera, from one of the victims, allowed them to be caught. Among the various victims, was the former River Plate technician Ramón Díaz.

However, that Friday in March 2017, when González was arrested in the Liceo neighborhood, the order to search his house did not arrive on time. Everything was postponed for the following Monday and a policeman from the 17th police station was ordered to stand guard at the door. It was during those 48 hours when someone broke a glass, entered the house and stole the unspeakable.

Prosecutor Raúl Garzón, in disbelief at what had happened, ordered the policeman arrested and charged with bribery. But behind this agent there was always more than a cloak of suspicion in relation to other police chiefs.

A little over a month ago, in the early hours of April 8, Mauro Gabriel Carballo, a 40-year-old man considered by Cordovan police ranks as a "disciple" of "Zurdo" Asís, was arrested on charges of having participated in the frustrated millionaire coup against Tienda Los Ángeles, in the pedestrian street of the city of Córdoba. His biography shows coincidences with what has been narrated so far: a comfortable economic life that allowed him to leave the outskirts of the city to move to exclusive countries, several high-end vehicles and an almost blank record.

Now, in the investigation carried out in Tucumán by prosecutor López Ávila, an attempt is being made to determine the connection between "la Gata", González and "Zurdo" Asís himself, according to sources who are aware of the "escruche industry". At the moment, only the first remains detained and formally accused. In Córdoba, the police sleuths say that they have been chasing the trail for a long time, so far without luck, that the three continue to be connected to each other.

But this is not all. In addition to the homes in the Patricios and Liceo neighborhoods, the Tucuman police raided the Saurit Automotores dealership, on Haedo street, in the Alto Alberdi neighborhood. Dedicated to the purchase and sale of vehicles, eight vehicles were found there that the Tucuman Justice suspects were used by "la Gata" and her henchmen in the "escruches" in Tucumán. For the researchers who traveled to Córdoba, in that Alto Alberdi shed, the zero point of this case began, the derivations of which have not yet been written.