Warning of Benidorm’s pickpocketing call-girls

BENIDORM residents are demanding the town hall take action against gangs of street prostitutes pickpocketing people’s valuables in the town.

EWN have been contacted by a long time Benidorm resident Phil Roberts, who lives with his wife in the Rincon area of the town, and has felt so strongly about the worsening situation in the area, that he wants others to be aware of the dangers.

“In the summer months my wife and I counted 13 women who were obviously prostitutes working on Calle Gerona. Now there’s not so many, but two gangs operate,” he said When we asked what he meant by ‘gangs’, he explained that the women were in fact robbing vulnerable tourists by surrounding targets in numbers and fleecing them of valuables.

“When you have three or four women around you all grabbing at you, before you know it your wallet and cash are gone and what can you do about it?” he said.

“Last night (Sunday) my wife and I saw a distraught old man who had just been mugged by these women. He had lost his wife three months ago, and when the women left him he was flustered and upset, and only then did he realize his wife’s wedding ring, which he kept in his pocket, had been stolen.

It’s despicable,” said Phil. “They operate in two gangs at the moment. One outside Rockys or KFC, and the other by Morgan’s tavern, and they surround single men who are more often than not tourists and a bit worse for wear, and grab at them, stealing whatever is in their pockets. The really bad thing is that the police do nothing,” he said. Phil says he reported the robberies 18 months ago and nothing has been done.

“The police come up and down in their cars and it is obvious who the prostitutes – or robbing gangs are – yet they never stop and arrest them. It wouldn’t happen in Britain.” Things are so bad now he says that he canot let his wife walk home from work by herself. Anyone who knows the area will know where prostitutes congregate.

On the Estrada into Altea, the bus stop opposite Arabi Plaza in Alfas, and perennially one solitary girl on the N332 between La Vila and Alicante, outside the closed Venta de Carbon Restaurant. One Dutch woman in her 30s who has asked not to be named, said she now fears for her safety at night in Benidorm.

“I work on the Levante and live up in the Rincon. Years ago there was no problem but now there are Romanian gangs everywhere, and they will hurt you. I walk home in the middle of the road, as I can see these guys gathered in doorways just waiting for their next victim.” The writer witnessed the aftermath of yet another mugging in Benidorm last week, when a man in his 40s was standing outside his hotel in the centre of the town, in broad daylight.

He was talking on his mobile, when two men approached him from behind, kicked him in the back of his knees so that he collapsed forwards, then they hit him several times and stole his mobile and wallet. All in daylight. He was shaken but unhurt.