Black Market Billions: How Organized Retail Crime Funds Global Terrorists (Gal Zentner's Library) Read Online Free PDF Page B

warehouse, where they uncovered $1.3 million in stolen merchandise from trailer heists. Out of the stash, $1 million worth of cigarettes stolen from Boca Raton was recovered. With the help of false identifications and paperwork, the five men associated with the heist were able to pick up the containers left at railroad yards and export the stolen cigarettes overseas. In an interview with the Associated Press, Marc Zavala, a Senior Detective with the LAPD cargo-theft squad called BAD-CATS, said the majority of the cargo stolen in the Miami-Dade county area ends up in Los Angeles. “Especially when it comes to cigarettes, we are seeing more and more loads ending up here,” said Zavala, who has been a member of the Burglary Auto Division Criminal Apprehension Team since about 1990. 12
    In the first six months of 2010, recorded cargo theft increased by 5% over the same time period in 2009. Products that were most likely to be stolen included food and drink, pharmaceuticals, consumercare products, and tobacco, which increased from an average loss of $751,000 in 2009 to $1.6 million in 2010. 13 Next to cigarettes and pharmaceuticals, the most frequently boosted product when it comes to cargo theft is auto parts.
    But auto theft-related organized retail crime doesn’t always happen on a large-scale level.
    Autotheft Gone Rampant
    Back in Albuquerque, Commander Harold Prudencio was about to let me in on a little secret. Leaning in close, he said: “If you want to see where most of the ORC happens in New Mexico, look at the stolen car reports for the week, then drive over the border. A lot of the ORC rings steal automobiles and sell the parts in border towns.” It’s hard to believe, but with statistics that say the amount of cargo theft that involved auto parts went from 19 thefts in the first six months of 2009 to 30 during the same time period in 2010, it seemed Prudencio was right. To see for myself, I drove to the border town of Palomas, Mexico. Now, if you are thinking that Palomas is anything like Cabo San Lucas, Acapulco, or Mazatlan, think again. Palomas borders Columbus, New Mexico, the place where Mexican revolutionary general Pancho Villa launched his attack on the U.S. in 1916. It’s also famous for cheap dental procedures, prescription drugs, and its drug wars involving the Juarez Cartel. Ten days before I started my trek south, I read that three people were beheaded. Their heads were found separated from their bodies in the town square by a priest. A couple of days later their bodies were found charred in a car just outside of town. This was definitely not a safe town.
    Soon, amid blistering desert sun and yucca plants, my luxury car (full disclosure—it was my mother’s SUV and, no, I wasn’t on the registration or insurance and didn’t have permission to drive it to Mexico, but I did it anyway) and I were sailing across the border between the U.S. and Mexico to test how easy it is to get a stolen car acrossthe border. I was feeling uneasy. At customs, the nonchalant border agent on the Mexican side took a swig of his Coca-Cola and asked me in Spanish if I had anything to declare. He briefly looked at the car and into my tinted windows, and then let me drive across. He had no questions about my registration or identification. Neither did he check to see whether there was anything in my SUV that I could potentially be smuggling into Mexico. The whole process took less than 45 seconds.
    I parked the car on a dusty road just a few feet south of the customs checkpoint. I made sure to park on the main street. I didn’t know which would be worse—if the car was stolen, or if an auto parts smuggler realized I was in Palomas doing undercover investigative work and decided to seek vengeance. I figured my mom’s wrath would be far worse. As I wandered around the town’s main street, I found several auto parts stores selling what looked like used hubcaps, rims, bumpers, mufflers, and tires, cleaned and on display