LATINO GANGS RULE CARGO-THEFT RACKET They've replaced crime families in lucrative heists

BY THOMAS ZAMBITO DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER With Edward Barrera

Sunday, April 7th 2002, 1:64AM

Latin American gangs have replaced the mob as the most feared players in the burgeoning, multibillion-dollar cargo-theft racket.

From a bold, midday robbery of $1.35 million in cash on the Van Wyck Expressway to multimillion-dollar thefts from warehouses in New Jersey, these gangs have taken over turf that once provided a steady income for the city's organized-crime families.

 

The likes of Jimmy (The Gent) Burke, the mob mastermind of the $5.8 million Lufthansa heist at Kennedy Airport in 1978, have been pushed aside by gangsters with names like Luis Toledo, Reynaldo Zamora and Jose Maldonado.

The notorious Lufthansa caper, which inspired the 1990 movie "GoodFellas," was dwarfed by the heist of $13.5 million in pharmaceuticals recovered last month from an Elizabeth, N.J., warehouse.

The mostly Ecuadoran gangs - which started out in Elmhurst and Jackson Heights, Queens, and whose ranks stood at 400 or so in the early 1990s - have swelled to more than 4,000 in recent years.

They are believed to be responsible for cargo thefts in 43 states.

Law enforcement authorities estimate that shipments worth a total of $12 billion were stolen across the country last year. Industry groups say the figure is closer to $18 billion when lost business and insurance payments are included.

Fueling the surge is a red-hot, cash-only underground market in computers, pharmaceuticals, high-tech equipment and designer clothing. With Miami and Los Angeles, the New York-New Jersey area forms the "Bermuda Triangle" of cargo theft.

More than $200 billion in cargo passes through the ports of New York and New Jersey each year. Law enforcement officials estimate that more than $500 million in cargo is stolen in the region annually - and that, too, promises to increase in years ahead.

A Daily News investigation of dozens of recent cargo heists found that cargo valued at millions of dollars has been stolen in the New York-New Jersey area in the last several months alone - although many of the thefts have gone virtually unreported, so skittish have victimized businesses become about publicizing such huge losses. Among them:

On March 7, the FBI arrested two Ecuadorans after recovering more than $13.5 million in stolen pharmaceuticals from a warehouse in Elizabeth, N.J.

The drugs - arthritis medicine, birth-control pills and organ-transplant medicine - were taken in three thefts in the Philadelphia area over the past five months.

A law enforcement source said the thieves tried to sell the drugs in New York City, but were unsuccessful.

The arthritis medicine, known as Bextra, recently was approved by the Food and Drug Administration and was scheduled to hit the market this week.

On March 14, New Jersey State Police recovered more than $3 million in goods from two warehouses in northern New Jersey.

Cops found an eclectic assortment of products - $100,000 copy machines, shoes, toothpaste and tire gauges - taken from trucks in New Jersey and Florida that were to be sold at a Newark discount store.

The owners of the discount store and the alleged mastermind of the heist were arrested.

In February, an $800,000 shipment of Chanel perfume disappeared from a Jersey City warehouse. State and federal investigators are looking into more than $2 million in thefts of perfume from trucks and warehouses in northern New Jersey since last summer.

In December, an $800,000 shipment of the prescription painkiller OxyContin disappeared some time after it was delivered by truck to a Newark warehouse.

The shipment was supposed to be shipped by air to Ohio. It is unclear when it was lost. OxyContin has gained notoriety in recent years because of its misuse as a recreational drug.

Two years ago, designer Nicole Miller lost part of her Millennium Collection of party dresses and wedding gowns, valued at $200,000, to an Ecuadoran gang that snatched them from a truck parked on a Brooklyn street.

The garments turned up in a Washington Heights apartment where customers were buying $385 gowns for $50. The thieves were discovered when one customer, unhappy with her magenta gown, called the company to exchange it.

 

'There for the taking'

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, federal, state and local authorities have grown increasingly concerned about the potential security problems posed by organized cargo thieves.

"Containers and trucks are what would be used to deliver a horrendous weapon of mass destruction," said Tim Kennedy, a former detective with the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor who serves on the board of the National Cargo Security Council, an advocacy group funded by hard-hit businesses.

"You certainly wouldn't expect to get it through an airport now. ... They're stealing from trucks and warehouses like it's going out of style. It's there for the taking."

Industry leaders are trying to capitalize on post-Sept. 11 fears to increase penalties for cargo theft and enhance security in and around the ports.

Such efforts have failed to impress lawmakers, many of whom view cargo theft as a victimless crime whose costs should be borne by business.

"Existing law does not provide an adequate deterrent because the penalties are not sufficiently severe nor is there an incentive for defendants to cooperate with prosecutors," said former New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who unsuccessfully tried to rally his colleagues with the Cargo Theft Deterrence Act in 1997.

The losses, however, have riveted the attention of businesses that ship large amounts of cargo. Many have been so hard-hit in recent years that they've formed security alliances to devise strategies to prevent losses.

The News reviewed more than three dozen criminal cases over the past three months. The investigation found that routinely, first- and second-time offenders receive probation, despite thefts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"The players don't seem to change," said Lt. Dave Salzmann, a cargo detective for 20 years who heads the New Jersey State Police Cargo Theft Unit.

 

Dearth of 'street assets'

The predominantly Ecuadoran gangs moved in on the mob's turf in the late 1980s and early '90s, plying their trade near airports or harbor facilities where they broke into storage warehouses or, using phony papers, drove off with truckloads of lucrative booty for resale.

With little more than nerve and a screwdriver - and a flair for outfoxing the legal system - the small-time gangs demonstrated that big-time profits flow when a truck or a cargo container gets into the wrong hands.

They rarely carried weapons - and, as a consequence, usually got reduced sentences when they were caught.

While isolated Italian crime families continue to mine cargo theft to fill dwindling coffers, authorities say they don't have the manpower to carry out labor-intensive operations anymore - or to stop the Ecuadoran gangs.

"The mob doesn't have enough street assets anymore to be bothered by these guys," said Port Authority Detective Michael Molina, a national expert on the Ecuadoran gangs.

In the past decade, the Ecuadoran gangsters - insular, suspicious of outsiders and solely reliant on immigrant labor, often illegal - have transformed the cargo-theft racket.

Lacking the hierarchy of traditional organized crime, gang - or banda - members are often recruited like day laborers, plucked off streetcorners to work in loosely organized gangs of five or six.

Alliances are made at weekend soccer games at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park or at restaurants along 37th Ave. in Jackson Heights and Valentine Ave. in the Bronx.

Intensely superstitious, some carry laminated cards bearing the likeness of the Virgin Mary on one side with a silver dollar taped to the back, talismans that are supposed to make them invisible to the law.

"These don't always work," Molina said dryly, holding up a card he confiscated a few years back.

The gangs are also patient and well-prepared, waiting weeks to gauge a truck driver's habits, watching to see whether he takes the same route every day or eats at the same diner.

Molina found in one gang member's possession a copy of the Jeweler's Board of Trade Manual, listing the names and addresses of every jeweler in the United States and what he or she traded.

Younger members have shown a propensity for violence, but veterans prefer a cold, clean heist.

"They are usually gentlemen," said Bobby Caron, deputy chief of the Port Authority Police. "They realize that if you use violence, they're going to bring much more heat on themselves."

 

There are exceptions.

In 1996, 10 men wearing U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration jackets burst from their vehicles, blocking a car headed to a Manhattan check casher from getting on the Van Wyck Expressway.

Among them was Reynaldo (El Rey) Zamora, one of Ecuador's most wanted fugitives, accused of killing five Ecuadoran police officers in 1991.

Zamora was caught a year later when Miami Beach police, acting on a tip developed during an investigation of a theft from a FedEx truck, found him in Hialeah.

Also known as Edwin Andrade, Zamora pleaded guilty to interfering with interstate commerce in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn and is serving an eight-year sentence at the Ray Brook Federal Correctional Institution in upstate New York.

Through his attorney, he has denied responsibility for the cop killings.

Computer parts to go

Hot goods get to the market in many different ways.

In some cases, a "fence" puts in an order for a stolen shipment of goods.

Thieves will sneak into warehouse parking lots at night, breaking the seal on a cargo container using bolt cutters, drills and Stilson wrenches - the tools of the trade.

The goods are unloaded into a van, usually one with seats removed. The bounty is divvied up, often in black garbage bags at a separate location. From there, it is taken to the fence - which might include mom-and-pop stores along upper Broadway, flea markets and bodegas.

Investigators have seen stolen computer parts shipped to Europe within 24 hours. Only the shipping labels are changed.

Sgt. Francis (Buddy) Murnane of the New York Police Department, who charts the shifting alliances and aliases of cargo thieves, has tracked the Ecuadoran gangs to California's Silicon Valley, where computer parts are served up like fast food and a truckload of computer chips can fetch more than $1 million.

In an office two blocks up from the Coney Island boardwalk, Murnane keeps more than 700 files on the city's cargo thieves.

He's seen them take everything, including a $110,000 shipment of human hair destined for a New York City wigmaker. "There's a market for everything," he said.

In California, high-tech products have become such a hot item - gangs can recoup up to 50% of the retail price instead of the usual 10% to 20% - that investigators say some Los Angeles drug gangs have stopped selling cocaine in favor of stealing laptop computers.

Inevitably, the lure of scoring big off the computer field led the Ecuadorans west.

Take the Guaman gang, led by Luis Toledo and Carlos Guaman, who met in Elmhurst in the late 1980s and by the mid-1990s were stealing boxes of thread from a Chinatown factory.

In November 1999, Toledo led his gang into the parking lot of the Quantum Corp. in Silicon Valley, where they tried to steal a million dollars' worth of computer hard drives.

They were thwarted when off-duty San Jose cops spotted them casing a loading dock. After a police chase, Toledo and four accomplices were arrested. Local cops sent their mug shots to Murnane, who promptly identified the gang members.

Between them, they had a record of 60 arrests, mostly in New York City.

Back in the gang's hideout, Room 218 of a Motel 6 in Oakland, Calif., cops found two boxes of Dell laptops. Receipts in their possession traced them to an Edison, N.J., computer company, where $40,000 worth of computers had been stolen days before from a truck on its way to a Queens dealership.

Murnane testified at the trial of the Guaman gang last year. Each was convicted of conspiracy to commit grand theft and sentenced to three years in prison.

Since then, all five, including Toledo, have been released from California prisons.

 

Graphic: A ROGUES' GALLERY OF CARGO THIEVES

 

LUIS TOLEDO, 43, aka JOSE BOLIVAR CALLE

A veteran cargo thief from Elmhurst, Queens, Toledo has been arrested at least a dozen times since 1988 on burglary- and theft-related charges. In June 1997, an Immigration and Naturalization Service judge ordered him deported. In November 1999, he and four accomplices were arrested after trying to steal a small fortune in computer hard drives from a Silicon Valley, Calif., manufacturer. Sentenced to three years in prison, Toledo was paroled in California on July 24, and six months later the INS ordered him deported. His whereabouts are unknown.

 

REYNALDO ZAMORA, 44, aka EDWIN ANDRADE, EDUARDO SAMBRANO

Authorities say Zamora is the notorious El Rey, one of Ecuador's most wanted killers, who allegedly murdered five Ecuadoran police officers in 1991. On July 19, 1996, Zamora and nine others, flashing red lights and wearing U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency jackets, pulled over a car carrying three employees of a Manhattan check casher in Queens and stole $1.35 million in broad daylight. Zamora was arrested a year later in Florida. He was convicted in New York of the Queens robbery and is serving an eight-year sentence at the Ray Brook Federal Correctional Institution upstate.

 

JOSE MALDONADO, 34

A New Jersey truck driver by profession, Maldonado has been indicted and convicted at least eight times since 1993 on cargo theft charges. The Waterfront Commission of New York-New Jersey estimates that between November 1994 and September 1996, Maldonado ripped off $3.5 million worth of cargo, but his total take over the years may be many times that amount. Maldonado usually pilfers goods from loads he has been hired to transport. His most recent arrest was in June, when he was accused of taking $280,000 worth of Calvin Klein clothing from a truck in Eatontown, N.J. He is out on bail awaiting trial in Monmouth County.

 

CARLOS FRANCISCO GUAMAN, 36, aka CARLOS GUZMAN

A longtime friend of Toledo's, he has been arrested at least seven times since 1991 on burglary and related charges. In 1994, Guaman and others were arrested for trying to pry open the rear door of a van parked on a midtown Manhattan street. Arrested in 1999 with Toledo in Silicon Valley, he was convicted of conspiracy to commit grand theft and was paroled in California on Sept. 4. His whereabouts are unknown.

 

CARLOS DeJESUS, 43, aka HECTOR FELICIANO

DeJesus has been arrested 16 times in New York and California since 1982 on charges including grand larceny, burglary and conspiracy. Until 1994, all his arrests were in New York City. In 1994, he pleaded guilty to mail theft in Pasadena, Calif., and was sentenced to 4 years in prison. Last year, while on parole, he was convicted with Toledo and Guaman for an attempted robbery in Silicon Valley.

 

 

Graphic: HOW A DEAL GOES DOWN Hot goods from cargo heists reach underground markets by different routes. The March 14 recovery of more than $3 million in stolen goods in New Jersey was the result of a typical cargo theft and fencing operation. Here's how it went, step by step:

 

1. THE HEIST Over several months, a dozen truckloads of goods, sitting idle at warehouses from New Jersey to Florida, are broken into by cargo thieves who move the products into waiting vans - a form of theft known as leakage. Photocopiers, toothpaste, office furniture, toys and backpacks are carted away.

 

2. TRANSPORT The stolen goods are shipped to two central warehouses, one in Newark and the other in East Orange. From the warehouses, they are transported to a discount store on Bloomfield Ave. in Newark.

In some big computer thefts, hardware stolen in the Northeast has been trucked to Miami to be remanufactured with phony identification numbers, then trucked back to the New York area for sale.

 

3. THE FENCE Consumers, unaware that the goods are stolen, buy them up at deep discounts. Among the deals: a $140 office chair selling for $20. About this time, cops get wind of the warehousing operation.

Some stolen laptops and computer parts are shipped overseas 48 hours after they are stolen and sold to European or South American consumers - often in their original packaging.

 

4. THE BUST On March 14, New Jersey State Police serve search warrants at the discount store and the warehouses, seizing more than $3 million in goods and busting the couple who run the discount store, Raul Lamberty, 33, and his wife, Luisa, 48.

Cops also arrest the alleged mastermind, Carlos Guerra, 41, of Irvington, N.J. All are charged with receiving stolen property.