Sheriff's Major Crimes Detectives Seek to Locate Owners of Expensive Bicycles taken in Burglaries
The Sheriff’s Major Crimes Bureau held a press conference today to locate owners of expensive bicycles taken in residential burglaries. The bicycles that were displayed are a portion of those bicycles which were recovered at the culmination of a month long investigation of a residential HOT PROWL burglary crew. These burglars would identify their prospective targets from the persons selling expensive bicycles on CRAIGSLIST. The suspects would make contact with the victims by using a fictitious name and email account. After establishing a dialogue about the bicycles with the sellers, the suspects would learn enough information to identify the residences where the bicycles were being kept. Much of this information was obtained directly from the unsuspecting victims and some was obtained by searching various internet sites such as FACEBOOK and White Pages Online.
The suspects would then drive to the targeted residences and burglarize them between 1 AM and 4 AM, often times when the victims were steps away, asleep inside of their homes. Entry into the homes was made via garage door openers, which were left inside of accessible cars or by cutting the garage door at the top and using a makeshift tool to pull the garage door opener cord, detaching the opener from the door and allowing the door to be easily rolled up. Although many of the bikes were taken from the garages, often times the suspects would enter the living areas of the residence, to locate and steal the property.
After stealing the bikes, many valued between 5 and 15 thousand dollars, the suspects would return to Los Angeles and sell them to a bike shop owner in the city of Los Angeles.
After many nights of surveillance, Major Crimes Investigators watched as the burglary crew entered a residence in the city of Rancho Cucamonga, using the method I just described, and stole a bicycle valued at more than $5000.00. Investigators then followed the suspects directly to another residence in Rancho Cucamonga, where the suspects prepared to burglarize another home. We arrested them in the act, without incident.
The property was recovered and returned to the victim immediately.
The three suspects were interviewed and implicated themselves in more than 100 residential burglaries. Subsequently, search warrants were prepared and served. Bicycles were recovered from a suspect’s residence, the bicycle shop owned by the fence and a storage unit rented by the bike shop owner.
The burglary suspects are identified as:
Julian Herrera MH/23 of Los Angeles
Jaime Herrera MH/21 of Panorama City
Alberto Mejia MH/24 of Colton
They are being held in San Bernardino County Jail with a $2,000,000.00 bail.
The owner of the bike shop was interviewed and implicated the suspects in the theft of the bicycles and himself in the receiving of known stolen property. Criminal charges are pending against Melecio Martinez MH/33 of Los Angeles.
After the arrest, Investigators sent out an email to all of the persons who the suspects had contacted via Craigslist, using their fictitious names. As a result, we have identified approximately 15 victims and were able to return their property to them, valued at more than $100,000.
We are asking for the media’s help in publicizing the arrests and the recovery of these bicycles, in an effort to return the property to the rightful owners. The burglaries occurred in the Counties of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Ventura. These included cities such as Agoura Hills, Westlake Village, Woodland Hills, Santa Clarita, Whittier, Oak Park, Temecula, Murrieta, Irvine, Fountain Valley, San Bernardino, Thousand Oaks, and Torrey Pines. Victims are encouraged to call Sheriff’s Major Crimes Bureau at 562-946-7893. Please have the brand, model and serial number of your bicycles available, as well as the police report number documenting the theft.
Partner to prevent or report crime by contacting your local Sheriff’s station. Or if you wish to remain Anonymous, call “LA Crime Stoppers” by dialing 800-222-TIPS (8477), texting the letters TIPLA plus your tip to CRIMES (274637), or using the website http://lacrimestoppers.org
To receive detailed, up-to-date information directly from the LASD via e-mail, register for "Nixle" alerts at http://www.Nixle.com and register for "LASD-HQ Newsroom (SHB), Los Angeles County Sheriff" and also register for your local LASD station area. Or, text your zip code to 888777 to receive text alerts only. Standard text messaging rates may apply, depending on your calling plan.
lasd content/LASD Site/Home/Home Top Stories/Major Crimes Detectives SeekSheriff's Major Crimes Detectives Seek to Locate Owners of Expensive Bicycles taken in Burglaries
The LASD.org® website has made reasonable efforts to provide an accurate translation. However, no automated or computerized translation is perfect and is not intended to replace human or traditional translation methods. The official text is the English version of LASD.org® website. If any questions arise concerning the accuracy of the information presented by the translated version of the website, please refer to the English edition of the website, which is the official version.
