Alleged Fencing Operation Busted in Omaha

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Warning shop.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
Good morning, good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Well good thank you. This news breaks yesterday of your
office conducting a couple of arrests. So the owner, what
the owner and a manager at this precious metal shop
and I was reading this looks like this could be
a pretty big deal. What's going on?

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Yeah, this is a huge case, number one. Huge kudos
to the investigators in the Criminal Investigations Division at the
kind of Sheriff's office, but also to Mayor Stott there's
investigators at OPD, and to Governor Pillon's investigators at the
Nebraska Department of Revenue. So the long and short of
it is this, there's a business down in eighty fourth
and FS. It's been there for a long time, Nebraska

(00:39):
precious metal that's locally owned and managed, and investigators determined
there was a pattern of known repeat thieves stealing items
from innocent people and many retailers in Omaha area and
selling them for pennies on the dollar to this establishment. Essentially,
it's your classic sense situation. And you know what we

(01:01):
know of is that you know, they buy law have
to report every transaction when they buy things from people
off the street. They buy law, they have to report
those transactions. They were not. They were only a reporting
a fraction because the suspicion is they knew that they
were stolen. Now inside that establishment, we see fifteen thousand

(01:21):
dollars worth of known these this had been reported stolen items,
and we suspect that over half of everything that came
and went through those doors were stolen. The damages could
be in the millions, and they were victimizing some pretty
well known retail chains Best Buy, Minard's, Low Shields, Sam's

(01:43):
Tractor Supply. Just to mention a few A jewelry, Well, no,
it's homewares, it's hardware anything, I mean, boxes and toys,
anything that the thieves could steal at these locations from
retailers or innocent people they will, and indications where this
place would buy them for pennies on the dollar.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Let me ask you an amateur question here. If I'm
running that place, why wouldn't I just report that buy
like I'm required to, and then and then claim ignorance
I didn't know it was stolen. Why wouldn't they do that?

Speaker 2 (02:20):
Well, in your hypothetical scenario, that would be indicative of
someone that knows that they're purchasing stolen items. Or likely
believes that they are and is making handover fist money
by doing so. And you know, there's three real big
takeaways here Gary. Number one, we've got to have our

(02:40):
retailers make sure they report every theft. I mean, that's
so important. We've we've got teen thousand dollars of known
stolen items. Retailers cannot just shrug their shoulders and say, gosh,
you'll never get caught. We will catch them. Just do
your part and report the theft. But number two, if
you were one of these people in our com unity
and you're you're selling, uh, stealing and selling these items,

(03:04):
call the DCSO tip line right now, four four four
six thousand, turn yourself in, do the right thing. Get
on the front of this. Most these folks are doing
it because of addiction. Get into the system. Tell the truth.
Let's see if we can get you. Get you sober
and uh and healthy and uh but uh. And Thirdly,
if you're a business out there that that does this

(03:24):
and you're thinking this is an opportunity for you to
fill this vacuum, you better think twice because our investigators
are coming after you. Next. If if you repeat this to.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
Seril operation serious penalties there.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
I believe it could be when all said and done.
Uh you know, we're we're talking to other agencies outside
of the state. Uh so this can get very serious
for these individuals or anyone else that wants to engage
in this behavior in the future.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
So what was the clue that these that they that
this marchandize was on open, that was in boxes like
it would be displayed in a store.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
You know, a lot of the investigative techniques that we
used to to crack this case. We're going to kind
of hold a hold close to a vest at this point.
But but yes, I mean, I can tell you that
that majority of these items that were seized yesterday were
new inbox and indicative of items that came directly from
retailers to this location. And then obviously those items, although

(04:19):
they're purchased for pennies on the dollar, on that value,
they are resold and that's where the real profit comes
in is reselling these items that are new inbox.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
Okay, well, good work, I multi agency Operation Sheriff's Office
OPD on the State Patrol and yeah, so you have
a lot of retailers that they got shrinkage and they
don't report it right.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yeah, and that's you know, that's the thing we're really
trying to deal with right now. You know, OPD has
done a good job of leading the charge with their
retail theft units that they have. They've done a lot
of good education of the retailers, and we got to
continue that. We need our retailers. Yeah, we understand. We
don't want their employees necessarily chasing these thieves across the
parking lot, but report every theft, do the best you

(05:06):
can to memorialize this. We can follow up and later.
Here's the deal. We've seen retailers close their doors in
California because it's huge theft rings and we don't want
that to happen here. These retailers are valuable citizens, members
of our community, and they employ a lot of people.
So we're going to do whatever we can to stand
up for these retailers, stand up for innocent people, and
bring justice to these criminals that are victimizing all of them.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
Very good Triff, Thanks always good to have you on