Four people were arrested this Friday (12/05) after the civil police launched Operation Unreasonable, which aimed to dismantle a group involved in a project that operated in rural areas and cut off the energy supply to thousands of consumers inside São Paulo.
22 court decisions were served, six for preventive arrest and 16 for search and seizure, in the municipalities of São José do Rio Preto, Lins, Promissão and Guaiçara.
This action is the result of intelligence work initiated in July 2025 by the Police Intelligence Center of São José do Rio Preto, in collaboration with the police stations in the region and the energy concessionaire responsible for the area, which identified two criminal cells of the same group specialized in the theft of transformers and electrical energy regulators.
The criminals mainly operated in rural areas, using the same method to commit their crimes: they disconnected the electricity network, overturned the equipment and, after destroying it, removed the copper from inside, leaving thousands of consumers without electricity and causing significant losses to the dealership and the population.
An investigation by the Police Intelligence Center showed that the group caused losses of more than 2.7 million reais in the dealership’s concession area alone, without taking into account the indirect damage suffered by businesses and residents affected by the power outage.
The term “unreasonable” reflects the absurd logic of the criminal system, which destroyed expensive equipment to obtain only copper, generating a disproportionate impact on the energy sector and society.
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The most affected towns were Cedral, Ipiguá, José Bonifácio, Tanabi and Monte Aprazivel, in addition to the records of other municipalities in the interior of São Paulo, such as Ibirá, Nova Granada, Palestine, Potirendaba, Ubarana, Bálsamo, Poloni, Guapiaçu, Bady Bassitt and Cafelândia.
In total, four suspects were arrested: a 62-year-old man in Promissão, two people investigated, aged 30 and 31 in Guaiçara, and a fourth individual, aged 22, already detained in a penitentiary in the municipality of Álvaro de Carvalho, where he was serving a sentence for other transformer thefts in the Cafelândia region.
Investigations continue to capture a fifth identified suspect, who has two warrants for his arrest, and identify other individuals involved in the scheme.