Brownsville police said they have disrupted an auto theft ring that authorities believe was not only stealing trucks and jeeps from Brownsville, but from other parts of the Rio Grande Valley as well and taking them into Mexico.
Authorities are also looking into the possibility that the group is responsible for the thefts of vehicles throughout Texas, said Investigator Martin Sandoval, spokesman for the Brownsville Police Department. At least four of the auto thefts in Brownsville have been linked to this specific group, police said.
Jose Delgado, 24, Roel Rubalcava, 25, and Jonathan Balderas, 19, all of Houston, were arrested and charges are as follow:
Delgado, one count evading arrest on foot, four counts of theft of a motor vehicle, one count of unlawful use of criminal instruments and one count of engaging in organized criminal activity. His bonds totaled $87,500.
Rubalcava, one count of evading arrest on foot, four counts of theft of a motor vehicle, one count unlawful use of criminal instruments and one count of engaging in organized criminal activity. His bonds totaled $97,000.
Balderas, one count of evading arrest on foot, one count of evading arrest motor vehicle, one count of possession of marijuana, four counts of theft of a motor vehicle, one count of attempted theft of a motor vehicle, unlawful use of criminal instruments and one count of engaging in organized criminal activity. His bonds totaled $102,500.
“They have been with us for the past three days. We know for sure here in Brownsville, and for sure one vehicle that we recovered from McAllen…We have been talking to McAllen, Edinburg and Alamo and it looks like this is the same group that was hitting them last month,” Sandoval said.
The vehicles being stolen are GMC trucks, Chevrolet trucks, Fords and Jeeps, Sandoval said. “That is the extent of their criminal activity. These people were prepared. They were actually prepared to do whatever it is that they needed to do to get these vehicles…the only thing they didn’t plan was for Brownsville police,” he said.
The police department’s auto theft task force noticed that there was a string of auto thefts that had occurred within the past two weeks, Sandoval said. The task force switched their working hours into the afternoon and evening hours to see if they could catch the thieves. “It wasn’t happening in the morning. It was happening in the afternoon and during the night,” he said.
Police got their break on Halloween when they spotted a white Chrysler 300 circling the area where vehicles had been stolen, Sandoval said. The task force was able to get video from the Sunrise Mall area, where some of the vehicles were taken from, and noticed the same Chrysler parked next to each vehicle that had been reported stolen.
A task force member in an unmarked patrol car started to follow the Chrysler and called for a marked patrol car for assistance. Although the marked patrol car tried to conduct a traffic stop on the Chrysler, the driver took off and fled from the location at a high speed, Sandoval said.
The chase of the Chrysler was called off because the driver was heading into a neighborhood where children were trick-or-treating. As soon as the vehicle left the neighborhood, another marked patrol car chased it. The vehicle fled again and struck several marked vehicles, Sandoval said. The suspected auto thieves fled but were arrested and taken into custody, he said.
“One of our agents actually did go to training for the key coding and as soon as he saw that in the vehicle he said ‘this is big. This is not normal from your car thieves’,” Sandoval said.
Police have a search warrant for the computer that the alleged thieves are using which could possibly provide them with information on the vehicles they were coding. “That is pretty much the black book,” Sandoval said.
Because Brownsville PD is in heads up with the state’s auto theft task force, the department sent out messages to law enforcement agencies across the state to see if they had been experiencing the same thing as Valley police departments.
“If we do happen to get other cities outside the Valley to let us know that this is happening, then this case might actually turn federal…because it is a multi-jurisdictional crime,” Sandoval said.
‘Sophisticated group’
“It was a very sophisticated group of individuals…the things they were using just amazed everybody,” Sandoval said.
The group had a key coder and would go sit in the parking lot of Sunrise Mall until they saw a vehicle “they liked,” he said. “They kind of used a scanner to scan the frequencies of the alarm systems and then once they do that, they have a computer, and they have a little module there where they can code their own keys” Sandoval said.
The alleged thieves carried their own keys that they could insert into the module to make fit into the vehicle they planned to steal, he said.
“They would hook up the computer to one of their computers to bypass all security things and then turn it on, and then within three to five minutes they had a vehicle without breaking a window, without breaking a steering column, with a key and they would take them into Mexico,” Sandoval said.
Although authorities could not say if drug cartels in Mexico are linked to the auto theft ring, they do know where they are ending up and what they will probably be used for.
Sandoval said there’s a misconception that vehicle owners have that their vehicles are equipped with an anti-theft device since the dealerships provide them with remote control devices.
“You think your car has an alarm, it doesn’t. That remote only unlocks your car and turns it on,” Sandoval said. “We tell people to buy an aftermarket alarm. That is a good deterrent.”
“The criminals are getting smarter. Throughout the years the manufacturers have changed different things for security purposes, the keys that have the chip. ‘Oh, they can’t steal this car because your key has a chip’ well guess what, the criminals found the way to bypass the chip,” Sandoval said.
