According to the FBI, the thieves who recently pointed to famous athletes such as Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and Joe Burrow bounced from a city in city using cars that rented with false identifications. They abandoned the cars as necessary, together with the burner phones that used to coordinate with each other.
They would hide in the forest while monitoring the patterns of the safety guards, then they would enter the houses of rich athletes breaking small windows or trying to open doors before converting the watches with inlays of jewelry, designer bags, gold chains and Cash rings, using loot washing machines away from your victims.
Its loot had an estimated value of approximately $ 3 million, taken from some of the best known athletes in the United States.
But the seven Chilean thieves who attacked star athletes for three months at the end of last year also made some rookie mistakes that allowed the police to finally be updated, as detailed in a sworn statement of 20 pages included in a complaint Federal Criminal without sealing Tuesday.
In the document, the FBI establishes how gang members got rid of supposedly publishing photos for conspirators to see through an Icloud site.
The images obtained and thrown by the FBI show three of the alleged thieves, along with an unidentified fourth man, posing with seemingly stolen watches from the house of the eaves of Milwaukee Bucks, Bobby Portis Jr. have been accused of conspiracy to commit Interesting transport of stolen property. They could face up to 10 years in prison.
It is known that the Chilean gang “travels throughout the United States and steals residences that belong to popular and known professional athletes” of the NFL, the NBA and the NHL, according to the criminal complaint. The gang “is responsible for stealing jewels, expensive brand watches, coin of the United States and other high -value goods.”
The gang methods included dividing “responsibilities for each member, such as renting vehicles, obtaining hotels or rents of short stays, acquiring fraudulent identification and contact January 30. Florida, states.
The police closed in a New York pawn house, allegedly connected to the ring, earlier this month.
The key to the success of thieves, until now, has been an ability to monitor not only the schedules of their victims but also the activities of police investigators and security equipment that care for the houses of the athletes, says the affidavit.
The FBI has not identified athletes by name, but the dates and locations listed in the criminal complaint coincide with robberies well publicized in the houses of the Kansas City of Mohomes and Kelce area, as well as with the houses of Portis in Milwaukee and Burrow in Anderson Township, Ohio. The complaint also lists two unidentified athletes, one of Memphis’s Grizzlies and another of the Bay Buccaneers Tampa.
Mahomes and Kelce were the first known victims, in early October, one of them during the “Monday Night Football” game of October 7 against the New Orleans Saints in the Arrowhead Stadium. The nameless Bucs player was attacked on October 21 during a contest against the Baltimore Ravens. Portis’s house was hit on November 2 in Milwaukee during a game against the Cleveland Cavaliers. Burrow’s house in the Cincinnati area was stolen during a December 9 match in the Dallas Cowboys. And the house of the unidentified Grizzlies player was stolen during a local contest of December 19 against the Golden State Warriors.
Information about possible NHL victims identified by the FBI, or additional victims of the NBA, is not provided, but near the time of the robberies of Kansas City, Tyler followed the stars of Dallas reported a robbery at home, with clocks valued at $ 500,000 that is reported. In December, it is estimated that $ 23,000 in jewels were stolen from the house of Dallas de Luka Doncic before an exchange sent the star of Mavericks to Los Angeles. It is not clear if the authorities believe that the Chilean gang is behind Seguin and Doncic robberies.
The FBI agent who presented the affidavit, whose name is blocked, attributes high levels of sophistication to the seven accused of the way in which they identified their objectives, found vulnerabilities in home security systems and discovered how to convert the loot of high cash value through “fences”. Men supposedly used false identifications, multiple rental cars and telephones with burners to avoid being tracked while traveling through the country between robberies.
At the same time, the agent identified a series of errors that helped the agents of the law identify the culprits and, crucially, directly connect them to many of the stolen elements. The errors included a series of selfies that the alleged thieves, according to the complaint, apparently shared with others to announce their exploits. The photos uploaded to a safe account of Apple Iloud, but the FBI was able to access it with a search warrant.
In a particularly lucrative robbery, apparently the one in the house of Portis, the gang members opened a safe “that contained several watches, chains, personal items, jewelry and effective. Also stolen was a suitcase and designer bags of designer Louis Vuitton “. The total value of the articles exceeded $ 1.48 million, says the complaint, identifying the victim only as “Athlete 4.”
On November 3, Portis published in X: “I consider Milwaukee my home. Last night, while I was at work, my house was stolen and many of my precious possessions were stolen. If you have any advice or information, please send a info@bobbyportis.com.
Referring to the theft of November 2, the complaint includes a four -men’s selfie photo, one with a chief t -shirt, within what seems to be a hotel room. On the floor there is a broken safe, along with a variety of eight watches, in addition to a Bejeweled clock that one of the suspects, the selfies photographer, is using.
A person’s face is passed out because the FBI has not yet identified it. In a second photo, the photographer Selfie prominently shows the clock on his left wrist along with several luxury items in a bed. Also in bed there is a yellow lever.
That same robbery was also remarkable for the video of the security camera that Portis published online showing two men at the main door of the house, with the head and the faces covered. They doubt while one speaks on a cell phone. Then he tells the other in Spanish: “Go for it.” The second kneels and uses an electric tool in a panel near the base of the door.
On February 5, a Federal Grand Jury in Ohio accused three of the men in relation to the theft of November 2. “Individuals seem to be the alleged tip of the iceberg” in a series of crimes, said the office of the United States prosecutor in the southern district of Ohio.
In the theft of December 19 in Memphis, the defendants allegedly scored an estimate of $ 1 million in articles not identified from a person identified only as “athlete 6” “.
The case of the Bustera of the Bengals attracted special attention after the theft of his house on December 9. “My privacy has been raped in more than one sense,” Burrow told journalists at that time.
The complaint revealed, identifying Burrow only as “Athlete 5”, listed the value of the articles stolen in around $ 300,000. Some of these articles were recently identified in a pawn house in New York City, and both the store owner and the employee have been accused of conspiring to receive stolen property.
At the end of January, the police arrested some of the suspects in their Florida rental car on an Ohio road. The body of the Ohio Highway Patrol Patrol showed one of the men with a bushing cap. The men did not speak English, so when an officer asked them in Spanish where they were going, they replied: “Orlando.”
“Incorrect address,” the officer replied. A person in the back seat then changed his destiny to New York, after returning to Florida. During a car search, an officer found a hidden bag behind the glove compartment, and inside there were two tools that another officer then identified as “window blows.” They also found a yellow lever.
They were arrested shortly after.
Burrow had used a security team to patrol their home while the Bengals were in Texas, but the complaint describes thieves how to have tracked not only the athlete’s movements but also those of their home security team. The allegedly monitored defendants in which changes occurred in the turn and when the security personnel would move between the back and the front of the house.
The complaint describes thieves as bold enough to stealthily enter the rear of the house without breaking any window while the security detail was standing on the entrance path. The allegedly monitored defendants monitored the movements of the detail “from a wooded area where security cameras were not located,” says the complaint.
The FBI agent describes the use of a series of high -tech tactics to concentrate on alleged thieves, including the data of the Local Police Licencies in various places on the routes of the accused. They also used data from the cell phone tower to locate the phones of one or more accused with their rental vehicles. The same rental vehicle was identified as in Cincinnati and Jeffersonville, Indiana, before being abandoned in a McDonald’s in Miami.
The seven defendants are identified as Pablo Zuniga Cartes, Ignacio Zuniga Cartes, Bastian Jiménez Freraut, Alexander Huiaguil Chávez, Jordan Quiroga Sánchez, Bastian Orellano Morales and Sergio Ortego Cabello. The last three, all identified in the photo published with the complaint, were also appointed in the accusation of February 5 in Ohio.
The ESPN researcher John Mastroberardino contributed to this report.
