English in Madrid

Remind yourselves of what happened to the Sycamore Gap tree and then read the latest : Foto de Andrew Masters en Unsplash Pair guilty of cutting down Sycamore Gap tree Two men have been found guilty of the " mindless destruction" of the world famous Sycamore Gap tree, the felling of which sparked international outrage . The tree had grown in a dip on Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland for more than 100 years before it was cut down in a "moronic mission" in the early hours of 28 September 2023, Newcastle Crown Court heard. Daniel Michael Graham, 39, from Carlisle, and Adam Carruthers, 32, from Wigton in Cumbria, were each convicted of two counts of criminal damage . Prosecutors said the pair carried out the "mindless thuggery " as a "bit of a laugh " but, when they realised the public's fury, they were too cowardly to confess. Jurors took about five hours to reach their verdicts with both men remanded into custody for thei...

Image generated by Chat GPT Spanish actor's son jailed for gruesome murder The son of a renowned Spanish actor has been jailed for life after he killed and dismembered a man on the southern Thai island of Koh Phangan last year. Daniel Sancho Bronchalo, the son of television star Rodolfo Sancho Aguirre, claimed he killed Colombian plastic surgeon Edwin Arrieta Arteaga in self-defence. He pleaded guilty to the murder in August 2023. At the time , Sancho, now 30, told Spanish news agency EFE he had been a " hostage " to Arrieta, who he said was obsessed with him. The case has generated a huge amount of interest in Spain, with scores of Spanish reporters flying to Thailand for the trial . Sancho was found guilty of premeditated murder, concealing a corpse , and destruction of property . A court on nearby island Koh Samui, where the case was heard, initially issued a death sentence for murder, but this was commuted to life imprisonment after taking into accou...

Source:   Jonny Gios  en  Unsplash Sycamore Gap: Man in his 60s held after Hadrian's Wall tree cut down A man in his 60s has been arrested by police investigating the cutting-down of the world-famous Sycamore Gap tree in Northumberland. The landmark , beside Hadrian's Wall, was cut down overnight on Wednesday. Northumbria Police said the man was arrested on Friday evening and remains in custody assisting with inquiries . A 16-year-old boy was arrested on suspicion of criminal damage on Thursday and has since been released on bail , police said. Det Ch Insp Rebecca Fenney-Menzies said: "The senseless destruction of what is undoubtedly a world- renowned landmark - and a local treasure - has quite rightly resulted in an outpouring of shock, horror and anger throughout the North East and further afield . "I hope this second arrest demonstrates just how seriously we're taking this situation, and our ongoing commitment to find those responsible and bring th...

Source: Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash Santander heir   gets £44m fine   for trying to smuggle   Picasso painting out of Spain on his yacht A billionaire member of the family that  runs  the Santander banking empire has been  sentenced  to 18 months in jail and fined €52.4 million (£45m) after being found guilty of attempting to smuggle a protected Picasso painting out of Spanish territory on his luxury yacht. The verdict by a Madrid court, which Jamie Botín’s lawyers have said he will appeal , comes almost five years after ‘Head of a Young Woman’ was seized on board the former banker’s schooner off the coast of Corsica. Mr Botín, 83, now a retired banker and uncle of Santander’s executive chairwoman, Ana Botín, denied wish ing to sell the Picasso painting abroad, but he broke the law in taking it outside Spanish jurisdiction after it was listed as a national heritage item. In 2012 Spanish authorities began to monitor Mr Botín’s...

Source: Wikipedia ( Thirunavukkarasye-Raveendran ) The Christmas lottery launderers   Winning tickets are sought out by crooks looking to avoid pay ing tax on their ill-gotten gains   In the hours after the winning numbers in Spain’s massive El Gordo Christmas lottery are drawn every December 22, discreetly dressed men and women carrying suitcases stashed with bank notes fan out across the country headed for bars, lottery outlets, and banks before the fortunate owners of the prized tickets cash them in . Acting on behalf of   wealthy clients, their mission is to buy their winning tickets: they pay cash, ask no questions, and offer a generous bonus on top. It’s a very simple way to help reduce their clients’ tax bill. “Everybody knows that the Christmas lottery has always been used to launder money,” says veteran tax inspector José María Peláez Marcos, adding that it is almost impossible for the authorities to detect this kind of fraud. “Lottery ticke...

Source: Pexels (Kindel Media)   Mother, daughter and boyfriend held in Madrid organ sale murder plot A Spanish mother is accused of conspir ing with her daughter and the daughter's boyfriend to murder her partner – and then reporting the plan to police . Officers say the mother, 52, and daughter, 20, went to police to accuse the boyfriend of fraud, after he had failed to carry out   the killing. It is alleged they gave him €7,000 (£6,270) to hire   a hitman to kill the mother's partner and sell his organs. All three were arrested for the plot. Police sources, quoted by Spanish media, say the plotters - all Spanish - signed a contract for the hit in March. But weeks passed, and finally the mother and daughter reported the boyfriend to police on 14 June. The boyfriend, 29, had claimed to be in Spain's CNI intelligence service, and had fake documents to that effect . Police say he had assured the mother and daughter that he could hire a colleague to ca...

Source: Sasun Bughdaryan en Unsplash Johnny Bobbitt: Two admit GoFundMe hoax about homeless man A homeless man and a New Jersey woman have admitted concoct ing a hoax feel-good story that drew more than $400,000 (£300,000) in GoFundMe donations . US military veteran Johnny Bobbitt, 36, pleaded guilty in court to conspiracy to commit money laundering . Katelyn McClure, 28, admitted wire fraud . They claimed Bobbitt gave McClure his last $20 when her car ran out of petrol near Philadelphia in November 2017. More than 14,000 people from across the world donated money. The bogus Good Samaritan story was posted by McClure and her then-boyfriend Mark D'Amico, 39.  Bobbitt, McClure and D'Amico still face additional state charges of theft by deception and conspiracy to commit theft. The couple had become acquainted with Bobbitt about a month before the hoax during their trips to a casino, investigators said. The story melted hearts around the world,...

Source:  Markus Winkler on Unsplash Ronaldo accepts €18.8m deal over tax evasion Football superstar Cristiano Ronaldo has cut a deal with a court in Madrid over tax evasion charges , accepting an €18.8m (£16.6m) fine . A huge media presence met the player outside the court, after a judge refused his request to appear by video or to enter the building by car to avoid the spotlight . The deal, agreed in advance, includes a 23-month jail sentence . But in Spain, convicts do not usually do time for sentences under two years. The non-violent nature of Ronaldo's offence means he is unlikely to spend any time at all in jail, serving it on probation instead. The court appearance lasted mere minutes as Ronaldo accepted the deal offered by prosecutors. The current Juventus player, who played for the club in Italy the night before, arrived smiling and giving a thumbs-up , apparently unfazed by the media presence. His lawyers had argued that given his fame, avoidin...

Source:  Felix Koutchinski on Unsplash Two nuns admit embezzl ing $500,000 for Las Vegas gambling trips Two Catholic school nuns in California have admitted to  * embezzling about $500,000 and using the funds over the years for travel and gambling in Las Vegas, their order said on Monday. Sisters Mary Margaret Kreuper and Lana Chang, who are said to be best friends, took the money from tuition, fees and donations at St James Catholic School in Torrance, south of Los Angeles. "We do know that they had a pattern of going on trips. We do know they had a pattern of going to casinos, and the reality is, they used the account as their personal account," an attorney for the school told parents and alumni at a recent meeting, the Press-Telegram reported. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles said the missing money was discovered during a routine audit and it is believed the nuns operated their scheme over at least a decade . Ms Kreuper was principal at the school for ...

Source: Wikipedia Stolen Picasso found in Romanian forest revealed as fake What was thought to be a stolen artwork by Pablo Picasso recently discovered in Romania has been revealed as a forgery . Experts had hoped that the painting was Harlequin Head, snatched from the Kunsthal museum in Rotterdam in an infamous art heist six years ago. A Belgian theatre company duped a Dutch writer , who wrote a novel based on the daring robbery , into thinking she had found the missing artwork in Romania. It says it staged the hoax as part of a project about the value of truth. The theft of the century, as the 2012 heist was dubbed by local media, saw pieces by Picasso, Monet, Matisse and others taken in three minutes. Four Romanian art thieves were jailed for the heist, but the seven artworks - estimated to be worth as much as €200m (£160m) at the time - were never recovered . Some of the pieces are feared to have been burned by one of the robber's mothers - who t...

Source:  Kenneth Vellinga on Unsplash London murder rate overtakes New York for first time ever after spate of fatal stabbings and shootings London's murder rate has overtaken New York City's for the first time ever, according to a new report. February marked the first month the UK capital saw more murders than New York, with 15 dead (nine aged 30 or younger). According to the report in the Sunday Times, London also suffered 22 fatal stabbings and shootings in March, higher than the 21 in the Big Apple. Both cities have similarly sized populations of around 8.5m people. New York City's murder rate has decreased by around 87 per cent since the 1990s. Meanwhile , London's has grown by nearly 40 per cent in just three years, not including deaths caused by terrorist attacks. On Saturday a murder probe was launched after a 36-year-old woman was killed in what is believed to be the 30th incident of fatal knife crime in the capital this year. The deat...

Source: You Tube (Happiness) Key Words: Black Lace conga Eat-and- flee gang hit second Spanish restaurant  Police are investigating whether a gang who ate thousands of euros of food in a restaurant in Spain before flee ing had targeted  another eatery . Last week, about 120 diners, who had consumed about 2,000 euros of food and drink, left a restaurant in northern Spain as dessert was due to   be served. It has now emerged a second restaurant only 10km (six miles) away was previously targeted in the same way. The owners said they believed they were the victims of the same group. In the first case, the group, purporting to be celebrating a baptism, paid a deposit  of €900 ($950; £770) to eat at the El Carmen restaurant in Bembibre, in the north-western Castile and Leon region. "It happened in the space of a minute," owner Antonio Rodriguez said. "It was something they had planned and they left in a stampede."  El Carmen's case felt more tha...

Spain's 'high-society scammer' breaks silence A 20-year-old student who infiltrated the inner circles of Spanish business and politics before being accused of a string of deception charges has claimed that he was arrested because he "knew too much". Francisco Nicolás Gómez Iglesias, popularly known in Spain as "Little Nicolás", was arrested in October on suspicion of swindling, forging documents and impersonating public officials. Despite not holding any official public position, he had managed to meet and be photographed with members of the royal family, including King Felipe VI, and politicians in Spain's ruling Popular Party such as former Prime Minister José María Aznar. Source: The Local Vocabulary : a scam / a scammer - a string of stg - deception / to deceive - a charge (criminal) - to claim stg / a claim  - to arrest sb  - to swindle - to forge stg - to manage to do stg - such as - former (adj) ...

Exposed: student conman who fooled king A 20-year-old student from an elite business school who was arrested last week on suspicion of swindling, forging documents and impersonating public officials cosied up to the cream of Spanish society, even managing to attend King Felipe VI’s proclamation. Who is Francisco Nicolás Gómez Iglesias? Now millions of people in Spain have heard of the fresh-faced man just out of his teens who in just a few years and without any official position in public life managed to hobnob with leading politicians and business figures, even attempting to negotiate in legal matters on behalf of Spain’s former King Juan Carlos. Many of those he met on the way were initially sceptical about this wunderkind with excellent contacts in the governing Popular Party (PP) but his charm and impressive lists of contacts, backed by the evidence of selfies taken with the great and the good which he kept on his mobile phone, usually smoothed away any doubts.   The...