Three suspects, including a pair of brothers, face federal charges for allegedly stealing identities and using them to open credit lines at high-end jewelry and other stores to amass hundreds of thousands of dollars of merchandise, authorities said Friday, April 25.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the filing of 34 felony charges against the suspects, who were not named Friday morning. The brothers face 14 and 13 years in federal prison if convicted and the third suspect faces six years, Bonta said.
The charges include one count of organized retail theft, 20 counts of grand theft and 13 counts of identity theft.
The suspects allegedly stole more than $300,000 worth of merchandise, mostly from high end jewelry stores and Harbor Freight stores, across California, Arizona, Nevada and Utah, Bonta said. In California alone, the suspects were accused of stealing more than $100,000 worth of merchandise.
“They would steal the identities, they would present themselves in these high-end jewelry stores as these other individuals, they’d open up a credit line in the store with the false name and then they would proceed to max out the credit line purchasing high end jewelry from these stores,” Bonta said.
Some of the businesses the suspects hit were in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, authorities said. Others were in the Bay Area, including Alameda, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.
Bonta said from March to July 2023, the suspects stole the identities of 13 California residents and used those identities to open up lines of credit at the businesses.
In at least one case, one of the suspects presented a green card to try to open a line of credit, Bonta said.
“That stood out amongst the jewelry stores because it was uncommon,” he said.
The suspects would also use driver’s license and passport numbers, he said.
After maxing out the credit lines, investigators believe the suspects would then sell at least some of the merchandise at pawn shops for cash, the attorney general said.
At least some of the businesses became aware that they were victims after they saw that the credit lines weren’t being repaid, Bonta said.
How the suspects were identified was not disclosed, but Bonta said authorities were able to identify them, conduct surveillance and then obtain arrest warrants based on evidence, including finding some of the stolen merchandise and IDs.
“We got a good sense, broadly, of where they were operating in the multiple counties,” Bonta said. “A lot of the thefts were part of the same line of high-end jewelry stores that operate in other states as well and that helped.”
In September 2023, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department began investigating a case with similar circumstances – the suspects used three victims’ names to open lines of credit and stole about $51,000 worth of merchandise, Deputy Chief Joe Mendoza said. Eventually, the department collaborated with federal authorities on the case.
“The most important element to disrupting these networks is for the public and businesses to report these thefts,” Mendoza said. “Fighting crime is a partnership and (we) can’t do it without the public’s help.”
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