Trained in South America : Horde of Skilled Thieves Frustrates Police in U.S.

Gem dealer Tom Schneider gazed out of the Pasadena restaurant toward his van, where $330,000 worth of precious gems were locked inside. Three men, who had followed him from a gem show, were prying open the van with a crowbar. Schneider ran outside as the thieves roared off in their car with the uninsured jewels. He couldn’t chase them; a tire on his van had been slashed.

“Probably three minutes had gone by,� Schneider said. “It was devastating. I’m still paying that bill off today.�

Schneider was among the many victims of what law enforcement experts say is a tightly organized, nationwide ring of thieves. Trained in pickpocket schools in South America, they steal more than $500 million a year in this country.

Law enforcement officials estimate that the ring has 2,000 members, primarily Colombian nationals based in Los Angeles and New York. They travel in teams around the country, stealing precious gems, diamonds, rare coins, traveler’s checks, expensive suits and even jeans.

“The whole thing is mind-boggling,� said Walter Lamar, an FBI agent in San Francisco. “Like a horde of locusts, (they are) seemingly everywhere and constantly on the move. The scale of the problem has not yet been identified by law enforcement.�

In the Los Angeles area alone last year, police put losses at $200 million. New York City, a major hub for the international diamond and gem trade, has been hit as hard or worse, police and industry experts say.

This year, the ring for the first time will be included in the California Department of Justice annual report to the Legislature on organized crime.

“We’re getting Teletypes from throughout the nation� about the ring’s thefts, said Ken Brown, supervisor of the department’s organized crime and criminal intelligence bureau.

But battling the ring has proved difficult. “They know the system,� one frustrated federal agent said. “They found a crack in our system and they’re just pouring through.�

Ring members have finely honed common criminal techniques. They observe a code of silence, in which talking means death. They stay constantly on the move, crisscrossing the nation by jetliner and car. They wriggle through the criminal justice bureaucracy by jumping bail and using dozens of aliases to conceal previous arrests.

Lack of Resources

Many local law enforcement officials say they lack the resources and jurisdiction to pursue ring members around the country and overseas. Although the FBI in 1985 set up a central clearinghouse--code-named Colgem for “Colombian Gem�--to gather photographs, fingerprints and rap sheets on ring members, the bureau has not made a concerted push to go after the ring, concedes Robin Wright, section chief in the FBI’s criminal investigative division.

Violation of federal laws are “a tough nut to make when dealing with such a mobile group,� said Wright, who supervises Colgem. “To determine if there is an orchestrated effort . . . is tough to do on a national scope. You can see the frustration.�

Authorities say it is not clear whether the gem-theft ring is tied to South American drug smuggling, or whether the stolen gems are used in efforts to launder narcotics income.

Both the drug and gem-theft networks have trails that begin in Colombia. And many ring members have convictions for drug possession, police say. But police who arrest the thieves say they don’t find drugs, and authorities say a wall appears to separate the two activities.

Authorities also say there appears to be no connections between the gem-theft ring and recent arrests in Chicago for alleged cocaine smuggling and in Los Angeles for massive laundering of drug money through jewelry stores.

Eschewing violence for simple ploys, the ring has pulled off scores of major thefts. In one Manhattan hit, a team made off with a salesman’s case of freshwater pearls valued at $3 million, New York police say.

Most recently, seven suspected ring members were arrested Sunday near a major gem show at the San Mateo County Fairgrounds. Police said the suspects were carrying burglary tools and false identification and are believed to have been trained at the School of Seven Bells pickpocket school in Bogota, Colombia. The name refers to bells on pants or a jacket that tinkle if a clumsy student falters reaching into a teacher’s pocket.

Similar Operations

Common techniques have helped authorities draw links between gem thefts around the country. Ring members often create simple distractions--such as splashing ketchup or other food on a target and then offering to clean it up. Or they will ask a target for directions. Or they will create a commotion by arguing or dropping cash outside a taxicab or in an airport, bank or store queue, and telling the target his money is on the ground.

And, in nearly every case, they move so fast that the victim can’t identify who actually stole the goods. “This is the most important thing . . . never to let the victim see who committed the theft,� one detective said. “Because possession of stolen property is not a felony in most cases.�

Sometimes for days, the thieves patiently trail a target and strike when he looks away or leaves the valuables in a car or room. The thieves have been known to follow their targets even thousands of miles--by car from Los Angeles to Pocatello, Ida., in one instance; by plane from Houston to Los Angeles in another.

Perhaps their most common trademark is slashing a car tire to disable a target. Thieves puncture the target’s right rear tire--a blind spot for the driver--or leave a nail to drive over when the car leaves a parking spot.

The thieves follow the car and volunteer help when the target pulls over to fix the flat. The thieves sometimes even follow the target to a gas station where they pose as attendants to repair or replace the flat.

Theft Techniques

Other ploys include carrying foil-lined bags into department stores to thwart detection systems, putting glue on their fingers to avoid identification if they are arrested and fingerprinted, and sometimes driving more than 100 miles out of their way to shake police. New York police have watched ring members take three city buses, two taxis and walk for a mile just to travel several blocks in Manhattan to gather in the mid-town diamond district.

And when on a job, the thieves never talk, police say. They communicate with sophisticated hand signals.

Los Angeles Police Detective Russell Suggs, who heads a five-member task force battling the ring, recalled a stakeout outside the Bonaventure Hotel. Atop a parking structure across the street, Suggs watched as a lookout on the street signaled her colleagues by hand and five people jumped into a getaway car. They looked over their shoulders directly at the detectives as they fled, Suggs said.

“It’s impossible to surveille these guys,� San Francisco Police Detective Ray Kilroy said. “They’re real pros. They know exactly what they’re doing.�

When police stop the thieves’ cars, officers typically find detailed city street maps from various states, jewelry show brochures with convention locations, tire jacks to pop open car trunks, nail pullers for removing clothing alarm tags, lock picks.

Airports are prime stealing grounds for the ring, police say. There are crowds to disappear in after a theft. Luggage is easily stolen. And foreign victims often won’t return to testify as witnesses, police say.

Source of Cash

Airport thefts also provide the ring with ready cash, traveler’s checks, credit cards, identification and passports that can be altered so that ring members can travel freely under assumed names and nationalities.

For years, police treated the thieves mainly as a pickpocket ring. A confidential Los Angeles Police Department report from 1962 contains more than 100 mug photos and arrest records on Colombian and South American pickpocket suspects dating back to the early 1950s.

By the 1970s, rumors swirled in gem industry and law enforcement circles of South American theft schools where the thieves actually learned how to steal.

U.S. authorities do not have much information about the schools. In 1979, an undercover Interpol agent managed to enroll in the School of Seven Bells, according to New York Police Lt. John Kelly. Such schools have recently popped up in Mexico, law enforcement officials said.

Sometime around 1980, the United States was invaded by a new wave of the ring’s soldiers, police and gem industry sources say. They fanned out across the country in teams of half a dozen and more, led by lieutenants specializing in what police call distraction thefts at airports, gem shows and department stores.

Efficient Operations

“Right away it was a serious problem,� said Russell Shor, diamond market editor for Jeweler’s Circular Keystone, the gem industry’s leading trade journal. “They seem to have done their homework. They work every major jewelry show in the country. But, with all the warnings put out, you’d be surprised how many people still fall victim to their tricks.�

In court papers filed in a 1986 sting operation against the gang, Los Angeles Police Detective Dominic Farchione described the suspects as “part of a large, sophisticated organization of thieves who operate throughout the world. . . . Members of this organization are currently frustrating the efforts of law enforcement agencies and the judiciary alike. . . . All information that tends to identify the suspect such as names, date of birth, residence, etc., will be false. . . . They are confident that they will be booked on standard bail under fictitious information, then post bail or bond and be lost in the sea of information that is now flooding our records systems. Warrants are issued and added to our computer file that will never be served. Additional arrests will occur and the cycle will repeat itself.�

The Los Angeles sting resulted in nine arrests--six men and three women--on suspicion of grand theft. Five of the thieves escaped. Prosecutors filed charges against six. Two received 16-month state prison sentences in a plea bargain. The rest violated their paroles after receiving credit for time already spent in jail before trial.

A typical theft arrest in California only carries a maximum $2,500 bail. Ring members routinely forfeit that bail money, police say.

As jewelry industry representatives clamored for help, police in the most hard-hit cities formed task forces to battle the ring.

The task forces, credited by the jewelry industry for at least temporary drops in their losses, appear to be effective--while they last. Police become familiar with the ring’s methods, maintain central files to identify members through fingerprints and photos, and know when to ask judges to raise bail on suspects sure to flee.

In addition to Los Angeles, the Chicago, New York and Miami police departments have at times operated gem-ring task forces. The Los Angeles task force, created last March at a meeting of 16 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, was to have disbanded in December but is still operating, Suggs said. Its fate now rests with the police chief.

“They made a definite difference,� said Robert Young, agent for the Jeweler’s Security Alliance in Los Angeles. “When they started the task force, the amount of our losses really declined.�

But the task forces usually last only until an immediate problem has passed. Departments then switch resources to other problems as the ring goes elsewhere.

In Miami, Metro-Dade Police Sgt. Jesse Varnell in 1981 set up the Pickpocket Intelligence Unit. Today, the unit’s files on individual ring members have since swollen to 1,350. The task force also sends periodic intelligence bulletins on the ring to 80 law enforcement and private security members worldwide.

Detective Ken West, who oversees the unit’s intelligence gathering, previously had worked a Mafia crime detail in Florida for 10 years, and he draws comparisons. “This group seems kind of like the old organized crime operation with soldiers, lieutenants and dons,� he said. “I don’t see any difference.�

Organizational Chart

According to one West Coast law enforcement expert, team leaders are called “hombre� and graduate up to lieutenant, with responsibility over a dozen hombres. But that is where police knowledge of the ring’s organizational chart apparently ends.

Ring soldiers apparently receive a salary. When the Chicago task force penetrated the ring for a short period in the early 1980s, they learned that soldiers received weekly paychecks of $500. Their traveling and hotel expenses on the road were prepaid in cash out of Queens, N.Y.

In San Francisco, a team that was arrested revealed a lieutenant in possession of what appeared to be salary checks, one security expert said. The checks were drawn off the Bank of Colombia’s Miami branch, he said.

Soldiers travel a regular two-year circuit around the United States before returning to South America. Or they get promoted and stay here. West’s intelligence unit has tracked members through arrest reports, he said. From the West Coast, they begin in Los Angeles and move to Las Vegas, Dallas, Ft. Worth, Houston, New Orleans, Miami, New York, Chicago and back to Los Angeles.

The teams move on as individual members get arrested and jump bail, sometimes swapping and interchanging people with other teams when they cross at airports, police say.

“It seems like they make the cycle three times and you don’t hear from them again,� West said.

The thieves also follow predictable routes to enter this country and disappear into the large Latino populations of their bases in Los Angeles and New York. Police estimate that Los Angeles houses anywhere from 300 to 1,000 members. Queens is home to an estimated 700 to 1,200 members.

East Coast teams typically pass through Puerto Rico on their way from South America. In Puerto Rico, members can acquire false identity papers. If arrested later on the mainland, they can claim U.S. citizenship, making it impossible to deport them.

West Coast teams enter through Mexico or via Europe. When arrested, members claim Mexican citizenship. If deported, it is only a short trip back over the border.

Tolentino Bravo Araya, a suspected ring member arrested in Gillette, Wyo., in November for cashing stolen traveler’s checks, was carrying passports from France, Switzerland, Argentina, Lebanon and Jordan, Wyoming authorities said. He had an arrest record going back 10 years with eight known aliases, according to a report by the Wyoming attorney general’s office.

Araya pleaded guilty last month to felony possession of stolen property and was sentenced to up to four years in state prison.

Before starting on the theft circuit, newly arrived soldiers often are taken first to the Midwest and mountain states for hands-on training by an experienced lieutenant, West said. “They go out there for small-town training to get their feet wet and then go to the big time,� he said.

No one knows exactly what becomes of all the clothing, gems, cash, precious metals and other stolen goods. The thieves themselves lead simple lives, holding on to the booty only as long as it takes to mail it, police say.

Some of the jewelry is melted down for its gold and silver and the loose stones are fenced through unscrupulous dealers in the United States, police and gem industry officials say.

Shipped Overseas

Most of the goods apparently are mailed overseas, generally through Los Angeles and New York and then to South America, sometimes via Puerto Rico, experts say.

Los Angeles police have stopped some of these “care packages� on their way to Colombia. In Chicago, ring members brought their own pre-addressed containers to ship back full to a mail drop in Queens. In the rare cases that police track down a team’s motel room or apartment, they always discover mailing paraphernalia. Booty has been tracked to London, Madrid, Antwerp and other European cities, police say.

Meanwhile, gem dealers wonder when will the situation will change, said Jack B. White, president of the Jeweler’s Security Alliance and a former FBI agent. The thieves “are smart. They are successful without a gun, without weapons. They have tactics that work.�