After nine years on the run, Britain’s most wanted woman has been arrested in Spain.
The fugitive, identified by British police as Sarah Panitzke, 47, was arrested on Sunday while walking her dogs in the village of Santa Bárbara in northeastern Spain, the Civil Guard detailed in a statement.
Sarah Panitzke had been wanted since 2013 for money laundering. She and other fraudsters bought mobile phones overseas and resold them in the UK without paying value added tax (VAT).
Britain’s most wanted woman has been arrested in Spain, after 9 years on the run. Convicted money launderer Sarah Panitzke was detained by partners @guardiacivil in Tarragona, Spain, yesterday.
Full story https://t.co/WDWuso8cp1 pic.twitter.com/YYpnaGK5RJ
— National Crime Agency (NCA) (@NCA_UK) March 1, 2022
Thanks to this scam, the criminal organization has made profits of more than one billion pounds sterling (1.2 billion euros), according to the Spanish and British police.
Head of bleaching
“According to British investigators, SP was the person responsible for laundering the organization’s profits through multiple companies it owned in Spain, Andorra and Dubai,” the Spanish Civil Guard said.
“At one point this organization managed to sell more mobile phones in the UK than all the legal shops put together,” she added.
Sarah Panitzke disappeared in May 2013 and was later sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison.