A Bonnie and Clyde duo successfully robbed nine banks in and around Lisbon while Clyde (real name Mário Rocha) was actually in jail.
The extraordinary story came to a sticky end in Sintra this week, when 49-year-old Rocha was caught red-handed by the PJ counter-terrorism unit as he led his 10th raid on a bank in Mem Martins.
Girlfriend and getaway car driver Tânia Moço was also arrested.
According to press reports, Rocha was coming to the end of a 20-year sentence for negligent homicide, drug trafficking and theft.
He had been in the eye of counter-terrorism police for “months”.
Even so, he had managed to rob as many as two banks a day when he was given “special leave” to start reintegrating into society.
On one three-day leave of absence last October, he notched up three raids – amassing, all told, around €20,000 with the help of his girlfriend.
Ironically, he is said to have “calmly returned to jail” two hours after the last raid.
Even more bizarre, Rocha is, or at least was, a regular Facebook user from jail – accessing the web on a cell phone smuggled in.
He is understood also to have posted songs on Youtube.
It was via his cell phone that Tânia Moço is understood to have supplied details of the banks the couple robbed.
The pair would then fine-tune tactics when Moço visited Rocha in Vale de Judeus jail in Alcoentre.
As Rocha raided the banks with a scarf over his nose and mouth, Moço is understood to have waited outside in a Peugeot 307 “owned by a family member”.
Now firmly back behind bars, national tabloid Correio da Manhã reports that Rocha has “lost the benefit of his periodic visits from jail, as well as the use of his internet phone”.
