Two men were arraigned on Wednesday, believed to be behind a series of robberies that left victims with no memory of what happened to them.

Masab Kanan, 24, and Mohammed Mustafa Abdalla Almagbri, 30, were arrested following reports from several people who said that they had “blacked out” and woke up in unfamiliar areas missing their possessions.

Police inspector Lydon Zammit told the court that on December 23, 2024, a man filed a police report and told the police that he had been robbed after meeting two men in Paceville.

The alleged victim had been walking next to Pendergardens when the two men approached him and they struck up a conversation.

He said that he remembered that the men were not Maltese, but little else, as the next thing he could remember was waking up inside a van in an unfamiliar location.

The victim recalled briefly seeing an unfamiliar man tapping away on his mobile phone before blacking out again.

He only came to again when he woke up to the sensation of his body being dragged in an unfamiliar and desolate area, which later turned out to be Marsa.

The man had been robbed of his mobile phone, his wallet and his watch. He later discovered that transactions had been made from his Revolut account during the periods of time he could not account for.

The first transaction was for a trivial amount at a Marsa petrol station, another was for the withdrawal of €1,000 from a Paceville ATM and the third was a Revolut transaction of €2,200 sent to a person living in Gozo.

Thanks to this financial footprint, police were able to obtain the van’s number plate and obtain CCTV footage of the victim, accompanied by the two accused inside the van, with the footage also leading to the identification of Kanan as one of the suspects.

Tracking data also showed that the victim’s mobile phone matched location data obtained from the phones of the two accused, with the two phones moving from St Julian’s to Ħamrun and up to Ċirkewwa before crossing to Gozo in the days after the robbery.

On January 3, police received another report in which the alleged victim claimed that he had blacked out and woken up in a strange place, discovering that he had been robbed.

The man told police that he had been out drinking in Paceville when he met two people who offered him a drink and a cigarette. After that, the man said he blacked out completely and had no memory of what happened. The only vague memory he had was of waking up inside a van before blacking out again.

He later woke up alone in an unfamiliar place that he later discovered was an area in Pembroke.

Through CCTV footage, the police realised they were dealing with the same perpetrators, recognising that it was the same two men as those seen in the December 23 footage using a different vehicle.

This footage also allowed them to identify Almagbri as the second person involved in the scheme.

The similarity of the two cases, in which alleged victims described being totally blacked out, sent alarm bells ringing, with officers going back to see if there were other reports that fit the same modus operandi.

“We realised that if they had done it twice they had probably done it to more people,” Zammit said.

“I was clear that it was not the case of people perhaps drinking a little too much and misremembering things, the people in these cases remembered nothing at all and were in a total blackout.”

Sure enough, after going through reports they found at least three other cases had filed police reports in which they described being approached by two men before blacking out for several hours and waking up to discover they had been robbed.

Police obtained an arrest warrant for the two men, with Kanan being apprehended in Qormi and Almagbri in St Julian’s.

The investigation also led officers to a hotel room where the two men had reportedly been residing, where they found several items related to the thefts, including the watch belonging to the man of the December 23 report and identity documents related to the January 3 case.

Zammit said that the large volume of items found in the room are still being accounted for and police are actively investigating other possible cases linked to the the accused.

Several high-value items were recovered from the hotel room, including top-of-the-line smartphones and a watch estimated to cost €10,000.

Prosecutors brought 21 charges each against Kanan and Almagbri in a seven-page-long charge sheet that included accusations of theft, in some instances aggravated by violence and value, causing injury, holding victims against their will and misuse of electronic equipment.

Almagbri was separately charged with possession of methamphetamine and recidivism.

The defence said that no case for bail would be made at this time.

Lawyers Franco Debono and Adreana Zammit appeared for Almagbri and Nicholas Mifsud for Kanan.

Police inspectors Lydon Zammit and Stephen Gulia together with AG lawyers Justine Brincat and Martina Calleja prosecuted.