Las Vegas police and retailers are currently in the process of cataloguing multiple 30-foot moving trailers filled with stolen goods recovered from a suspected fencing operation, with the value of the goods estimated at well over $1 million.
Retailers helped the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s Organized Retail Crime Section unload the trailers of recovered goods at an undisclosed warehouse in Las Vegas on Monday morning, according to police. The various goods were sorted by type, then sorted based on which products belong to individual retailers. As many as two dozen retailers sent representatives to sort through the items to identify and reclaim merchandise.
Photos shared by the department showed boxes upon boxes of records, scooters, name-brand kitchen appliances, laptops, tablets, other electronics, and household goods like plumbing fixtures. Additional property recovered included items stolen through home burglaries and other thefts, including jewelry and other items.
An investigation into the suspected fencing operation reportedly began in October, when detectives honed in on a residence in the 2100 block of Glen Heather Way. On November 17, LVMPD’s Organized Retail Crime Section and investigators with the Department of Homeland Security served a search warrant at the residence. According to the arrest report, “Every room in the house was filled floor to ceiling with property.”
Three men were taken into custody and booked into the Clark County Detention Center. Jose Campos Rodriguez, 29; Jose Morales Casas, 29; and Jose Reyes, 52 were arrested for participating in organized retail theft and buying, possessing, and receiving stolen property. Las Vegas Metropolitan police said the men had been acting as a fencing operation for several months, and possibly several years. According to reports, they were allegedly buying stolen merchandise from the same people on a daily basis for more than two years.
Hopefully, this will impact awareness of organized retail crime in Nevada, said Paul Korec with the Nevada Organized Retail Crime Association (NVORCA). “The counting and sorting of the merchandise is still ongoing.”
