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New Orleans employees charged with theft of metal, copper www.privateofficer.com
New Orleans LA May 12 2011 Three New Orleans Department of Public Work employees lost their jobs and two were arrested Friday after allegedly stealing metal and copper wire from a city supply yard and selling it to a Chalmette scrap yard.
Delbert Surtain, 39, and Richard Thompson, 34, both of New Orleans, were booked in St. Bernard Parish on a count of possession of stolen property, Chief Deputy Jimmy Pohlmann said.
An investigation by the St. Bernard Sheriff’s Office indicates that Surtain received at least $15,000 since 2009 by selling material to W.B. Scrap in the 5000 block of Paris Road, Pohlmann said.
A third city employee, who was not identified, is a suspect in the case, Pohlmann added, and he sold about $37,000 worth of property over the past two years that may have belonged to the city. Those items included streetlights and traffice signals.
“We don’t know if those items were stolen yet. We haven’t verified that,” said Col. John Doran, chief of detectives.
The value of the material sold could be at least $100,000, since scrap yards don’t pay full value, Pohlmann said.
There were no records that showed Thompson had been to the scrap yard before Friday, Pohlmann said.
New Orleans Deputy Mayor Cedric Grant on Tuesday said he has “no tolerance” for the alleged thefts. “That’s what this swift action indicated,” he said. “Anything remotely resembling theft or crime will be dealt with severely and promptly.”
Surtain and Thompson ended up in custody after someone flagged down a sheriff’s deputy about 9:20 a.m. Friday when the men pulled up to the business in a New Orleans department of public works truck, Pohlmann said. Surtain and the unidentified man who sold scrap to the yard were usually in a city-owned truck when they went to sell scrap, a scrap yard representative said.
Nathan Barlow, who manages the business, said no red flags were ever raised since a man visited the yard two years ago and identified himself as a department of public works supervisor, saying some of his employees would sell them scrap on occasion.
“He came in and shook our hands like everyone else,” Barlow said. “We could’ve bought from him for 10 years and we wouldn’t have known (not to).”
Barlow said Surtain and the other man typically sold the scrap yard damaged traffic signals, street lights and their parts.
“They even sold the stop lights — the red, green and yellow,” he said.
Although investigators suspect the signals and lights were sold to the scap yard without city authorization, theft charges are pending the outcome of a New Orleans Police Department investigation, Grant said.
Surtain and Thompson told the deputy during Friday’s traffic stop that the wire they sold to the yard was left over from a job and that they had permission to take it. Thompson later admitted to a deputy he didn’t have permission to take the wire, according to a police report.
A department of public works supervisor summoned to the traffic stop identified the wire as being stolen from a yard in the 2800 block of Lafitte Street in Mid-City. Now sheriff’s office investigators are going through the scrap yard’s files to help the city determine if the items previously sold there were stolen from the city.
“We’re going to have to backtrack. We have a little work cut out for us to do,” Doran said.
Doran said the scrap yard has cooperated with the investigation.
“There’s no indication that they knew anything was wrong. These guys went in there with a good story that ‘this is scrap stuff, we have permission to do this,’” Doran said.
Source:NOLA.com
Crime ring charged in counterfeit credit card scam www.privateofficer.com
Crime ring charged in counterfeit credit card scam http://www.privateofficer.com
Six men in a crime ring which used counterfeit credit cards to buy thousands of dollars worth of merchandise from Wal-Mart were arrested Tuesday when store security found out they were working as a team, police said.
Bradley O. Brown, 21, of Springfield; Yonaides Pichardo, 20, of Indian Orchard; Kareem M. Powell, 20, of Hartford, Conn.; and Richard Thompson, 22, Ronique Evans, 21, and ONeil Novada Snaith, 22, all of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., were arrested at 12:45 p.m. with nearly $4,000 worth of stolen goods in a nearby van, police said.
The six are also suspects in similar thefts at Wal-Mart stores in Chicopee and Springfield, Officer Robert Sibilio said.
“A lot of these rings stick to the same type of store,” he said. “They get comfortable in certain stores. They think they know the security systems. They won’t go to a Target, because it would be totally different.”
On Tuesday, Wal-Mart security stopped two men who had just bought several televisions and other items with what they believed were fraudulent credit cards.
They were stopped by security, who also saw four other men they thought were working with them parked in two separate cars outside, Sibilio said.
“The security at Wal-Mart is very good, and they caught these guys walking by each other and making eye contact,” he said. “It seems from the amount of product taking, it was nipped in the bud. Only three of the six men had come in so far.”
In describing the scam, police said one or two men at a time would come into the store, but shop separately. They would load their carts with electronic equipment.
They would then go through the checkout lane and use the fake credit cards. The cards would have their names on the front and a fake credit card number. However, the magnetic strip on the back of the card, which contained real credit card information, which was somehow obtained illegally, would be used by the clerks.
If the clerks asked for an ID, the names would match the one on the front of the card.
“These guys are professionals,” said Sibilio. “This isn’t something they just did that day.”
Along with the TVs, the group stole cell phones and video game systems. The suspects took the items out to a waiting Ford Econoline van, Sibilio said.
“This was a great bust,” Framingham Police spokesman Lt. Paul Shastany said.
Although not all of the men went into the store, all were charged under the legal theory of joint venture, meaning they shared culpability.
All six were charged with larceny of property worth more than $250, receiving stolen property worth more than $250, credit card fraud, uttering and forgery.
Thompson, Evans and Snaith were also charged with credit card misuse.
Evans, Thompson and Brown all pleaded not guilty at their Framingham District Court arraignments yesterday and were released without bail.
Snaith and Powell also pleaded not guilty and were released on $500 bail. Pichardo was released on $1,500 bail.
All are due back in court on Dec. 18 for pretrial conferences.
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