Re: I call that a successful operation
That is more or less expected as it was a Europol operation. Their role is specifically to collect and share intelligence with regular police forces, investigate bigger and border-crossing types of crime, and coordinate pan-European searches and arrests.
They don't have their own 'cops', they leave the searches and arrests to local police forces but they will take the coordinating role (so a dawn raid in Portugal doesn't alert the accomplices in Finland because all raids happen simultaneously).
It tends to take a while before Europol gets involved, petty crime is not their thing, but when they do get involved they tend to be quite impressive operations. What probably triggered Europol involvement is that this wasn't just a local gang who fiddled with some fobs to steal a handful of cars but that it was an organised crime ring that sold their tech and services to local gangs.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
