Sarah Panitzke Wiki
Sarah Panitzke Biography
Who is Sarah Panitzke ?
Britain’s ‘most wanted’ woman will return to Britain in coming days after losing her fight against extradition.
University graduate Sarah Panitzke had asked Spanish judges to reject an extradition request from the UK, which would have required her to serve an eight-year prison sentence for multi-million pound VAT fraud, handed down in her absence by a London court in 2013.
She had demanded the right to be able to serve her sentence in Spain given her strong ties to her ‘adoptive homeland’.
Arrested and Charged
But judges ruled against her on appeal and the 48-year-old swindler, arrested in February in a Catalan town after nine years on the run, is now spending his last days in a prison near Madrid before returning to Britain. . to start his jail sentence.
The two months she has spent behind bars since her arrest, carried out by an elite Spanish anti-fugitive unit while walking her dogs near her hideout, seven years after she escaped a first police attempt to catch her wearing a wig and an emergency backpack. she will take away the time that she has to serve.
Panitzke’s high-profile arrest on February 27 made headlines in Spain and the UK, as she was the only woman on the National Crime Agency’s most wanted list.
The daughter of the Yorkshire-born property developer told the Guardia Civil officers who held her that she had felt “hurt” at being compared to men linked to some of the UK’s most horrific violent crimes after her arrest.
It emerged today that she had been living for seven years prior to her arrest on a fake Italian ID in the name of Antonietta Argiulo, although Maria Antonietta’s name is believed to have been scrawled on a postbox outside the apartment where she stayed. hid.
Her hideout was a three-bedroom duplex on the outskirts of the small town of Santa Bárbara in the Tarragona province south of Barcelona.
Defense lawyers opposed her extradition to the UK on the grounds that she had strong ties to Spain, had lived in the country since the mid-1990s and had married a local man 17 years ago.
They said her husband had only 10 years to live due to a liver transplant and that he would not be able to visit her in the UK if she were extradited.
The lawyers also argued that the crimes for which Panitzke was charged – and later convicted – would have been spent under Spanish law in legal arguments rejected by a Madrid court on appeal.
She was convicted in absentia of money laundering through companies in Spain, Andorra and Dubai for a criminal group that bought mobile phones abroad without VAT and resold them in the UK.
Panitzke was recruited into notorious criminal prosecutor Geoffrey Johnson’s network of swindlers located throughout the UK after meeting an acquaintance.
He remained the only member of the 18-member gang to flee because ringleader Johnson was arrested in Dubai in 2017 and later sentenced to 24 years in prison.
The head of the elite team of the Civil Guard in charge of leading the operation to catch Panitzke, called the Fugitive Operational Group of the Central Operational Unit of the Civil Guard, said after the arrest: “Sarah told us in the car on the way to Barcelona after his arrest that had hurt him a lot that his mugshot had been included along with all the men linked to violent and despicable crimes on the National Crime Agency’s Wanted List.
She also claimed that she had wanted to give herself up but that she had never found the right opportunity.
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She said that she felt that she had already served her sentence because she had been living in almost total isolation for several years, cut off from family and friends.
Her father died while she was on the run and she didn’t go to her funeral.
“We asked Sarah why she had never been to visit him and she told us that while he was alive she made it clear that he would rather not see her than see her in jail.
She also complained that she could only buy a cheap gin for her gin and tonics because her money started to run out and not the more expensive gin she had always enjoyed.
‘It was a case of: ‘I used to have a great life and now the life I lead is pitiful’.
Neighbors in Santa Barbara said she went swimming in the apartment block’s community pool during quiet lunch hours, but that she led a very low-key life and rarely invited anyone to her home.
One of the officers involved in her arrest was an undercover police officer who seven years earlier, unaware of her, had aroused her suspicions when he stopped by her previous hideout to get a closer look and try to confirm the truth. identification of her.
He ended up on the run with a wig and an emergency backpack and kept on the run for another seven years.
Spanish police said after her arrest that she appeared to continue to protest her innocence despite her arrest, telling officers who accompanied her on the car ride to Barcelona to take her fingerprints where she opened after years of silence: “She said that the ringleader was the one who was to blame for everything and she had done nothing wrong and was not to blame.
‘She called him the ‘fat bastard’ who had gotten her into all this.
It’s a story we’re used to hearing when we arrest people on the run.
“There was a moment when she got a little emotional, but there weren’t any tears flowing. I think it was more a matter of feeling relieved after spending so much time without talking to anyone and suddenly seeing a lot of people focusing on her.
A source said at the time: “Physically, she looks British or someone who wasn’t local at least.”
“But her command of Catalan and Castilian Spanish meant she didn’t fit the stereotype of the average British fugitive.”
The scammer’s mother, 77-year-old widow Pauline Panitzke, reacted to news of her daughter’s arrest at her home in the sleepy town of Market Weighton, east of Yorks, saying: “At least I know she is healthy and save”.
Sarah Panitzke Quick and Facts
- Madrid police caught Sarah Panitzke, 47, as she walked her dog near her home
- Panitzke helped launder up to one billion pounds in mobile phone VAT fraud
- She is reportedly in a prison near Madrid ahead of her expected extradition
Source: https://wikisoon.com/
