The mainly Saudi gang, except for a Syrian and an Egyptian, stole cars from workshops and car washing or painting centers across the Kingdom, disguised them and faked their documents, according to a police statement issued on Monday.

The operation, carried out by a special task force set up by the capital’s police under the orders of Riyadh Gov. Prince Salman, came after a series of complaints. The gang was skilled in forging car documents, which they used to pass themselves off as the registered owners of the stolen vehicles to cheat owners of workshops. The favorite targets were expensive SUVs and recent model vehicles.

After an extensive probe into the thefts and the discovery of some of the lost cars, the task force gleaned valuable clues.  This resulted in an operation that netted 19 gang members at two locations in the capital.

In the first raid, six gang members, five Saudis and one Syrian, were detained from their homes in the city. Police seized four stolen vehicles and a considerable number of firearms. Most of the recovered vehicles had their chassis numbers altered. Many more members of the gang were arrested from another location in the city.  Following information supplied by the suspects, police arrested more gang members in the town of Arar in the Northern Border Province.

Seven more of the thieves, all Saudis, were tracked down to the border city of Qurayyat and others were arrested in Hail and Qassim.

Police seized office seals and stamps, number plates and spare parts from suspects’ homes. The sophisticated operation was well established and the gang owned workshops to dismantle, disguise and reassemble stolen cars.

Although 300 stolen cars were seized in the operation, gang members admitted that they had already sold 125 cars and 143 were found in the process of alteration. However, 105 cars were returned to their owners by police. The gang was divided into several sub groups. While one team stole cars, another team altered them. Yet another team bought old cars and transferred their number plates to stolen ones and another sold the cars both inside and outside the Kingdom.

The case is under investigation.