Police bust a cell phone robbery ring
Could pass Senate, but Don has ordered it DOA in GOP House
Cops have busted alleged members of a crime ring that pulled off a multiborough robbery streak in which dozens of cell phones were snatched out of unsuspecting New Yorkers’ hands, NYPD brass and Mayor Adams announced.
The crew, which includes a number of migrants, is responsible for at least 62 thefts involving hacked financial data in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, officials said Monday.
The busts came after police, working alongside U.S. marshals, executed a warrant at an apartment on Bronx Park East near Adee Ave. in Allerton at around 5:30 a.m., police said.
Inside the residence, which belongs to 30-year-old ring leader Victor Parra, were 22 stolen phones and victims’ IDs, cops said. Parra was not at home at the time and is still in the wind.
Among those taken into custody was Parra’s lead tech guy who hacks into the stolen phones, Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said at a news conference.
“He gains access to the victim’s financial and banking apps,” Kenny said of that suspect.
“These apps are used to make illegal transactions and fraudulent purchases in the United States as well as South America.”
Seven people have been busted in the Bronx, five of them migrants, officials said.
“It doesn’t matter if a person is a migrant asylum seeker or if the person is a long-term New Yorker,” Adams said.
“You break the law, you will be investigated, and it will be handled by our criminal justice system.”
In Parra’s scheme, when the looted accounts were empty or victims put holds on their accounts, he shipped the phones to Colombia to be reprogrammed, police said.
Cops believe there are 14 people in the crew and are working to nab the others involved.
The robberies date to November, when most of the men first arrived in the city. The latest robbery happened Sunday night in Chinatown, cops said. The crew has stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars in property and accounts, they added.
“This network of thieves predominantly live in the migrant shelter system,” Kenny said. “They use social media platforms to organize and coordinate their thefts.”
Police believe Parra’s scam uses WhatsApp to blast out a citywide message to thieves willing to steal phones, making it difficult for cops to pin down who is involved.
Senate leaders Monday pushed for a bipartisan border security compromise but GOP hard-liners are digging in their heels to derail the deal.
Both Republican and Democratic Senate leaders were wrangling to reach 60 votes for the tough $118 billion bill, which includes a string of GOP priorities, in the evenly divided upper chamber.
But far-right-wing Republican lawmakers vowed to block the bill at the behest of former President Donald Trump, who is warning against any bill that gives President Biden a political victory in an election year.
If the measure, which also includes desperately needed military aid for Ukraine and assistance for Israel, gets through the Senate, it faces an even tougher path in the GOP-held House, where Speaker Mike Johnson has proclaimed it “dead on arrival.”
“Any consideration of this Senate bill in its current form is a waste of time. It is DEAD on arrival in the House,” Johnson said in a statement. “We encourage the
U.S. Senate to reject it.”
The measure includes major concessions from Democrats on the border including turning away all undocumented immigrants and asylum-seekers if border crossings stay as high as they are now.
It would also dramatically beef up spending to border security agencies that have been overwhelmed in the face of increased numbers of migrants.
Despite including most of what Republicans say are needed policy changes, the bill is in serious danger of falling short of the needed 60 votes as Trump urges his MAGA followers to avoid doing anything that could benefit Biden.
“The ridiculous ‘Border’ Bill is nothing more than a highly sophisticated trap for Republicans to assume the blame on what the Radical Left Democrats have done to our Border, just in time for our most important EVER Election,” Trump wrote on his social media platform. “Don’t fall for it!!!”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says he could call the measure for a vote as soon as Wednesday.
More than 15 GOP senators and at least three liberals say they will vote against the deal. Others are demanding more time to go over the bill, most likely in hopes of scuttling it.
Proponents of the measure hope if the Senate passes the bill, pressure would build on the House to also pass it.
Johnson can decide which bills come up for votes in the chamber, where it would need a simple majority to pass.
But there are procedural gimmicks to force a vote over Johnson’s objections, if supporters can win over a handful of moderate Republican lawmakers.
Senators have been working for months on the carefully negotiated compromise on the border, which is also designed as an end run around right-wing opposition to more aid for Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion.
A Brooklyn man was gunned down in a barrage of bullets the same night a vigil was held for a friend who was himself killed just a night earlier.
Family said Kereem Morgan, 23, was on his way home from a Wednesday night ceremony for his buddy Brandon Nichols when a gunman opened fire at about 6:30 p.m. Wednesday near the corner of Utica Ave. and Union St. in Crown Heights.
Morgan, who was shot several times in the chest, died a short time later at Kings County Hospital.
“Can’t even believe this s–t,” one friend posted on social media. “I love both y’all.”
The gunman, described as a tall man wearing black, took off on foot toward nearby Lincoln Terrace/Arthur S. Somers Park, police sources said.
Family say that earlier in the evening, Morgan went to pay his respects for Nichols, who was shot and killed Jan. 30 in the basement of a building on President St. near Utica Ave. Cops said Nichols died from a gunshot wound to the torso.
There have been no arrests in either case.
“When he walked out here, he told me that he’s coming back in a short little while,” said Nichola Morgan, the victim’s aunt, who raised him as one of her own after his mother died 17 years ago.
But Morgan didn’t tell her where he was going, and she said she had a strange feeling about him leaving the house.
“I saw him going downstairs,” she said. “I was telling him, ‘Why don’t you just stay inside?’ And he said, ‘Auntie, I’m coming right back.’
“My cousin upstairs told him, too — ‘Why don’t you just stay inside?’ And he’s like, ‘Cousin, I’m coming right back. I’m not staying long.’”
She said that before the victim left, he ran an errand for his grandmother.
“That’s what he did,” Nichola Morgan said. “And then I watched him on the camera, and he walked out and that was the last I saw of him.”
Hours later, she said she got the news from a relative.
“One of my cousins called me and asked me where I’m at,” she said. “I told her I just came from work, but I don’t understand why my body’s feeling so nervous.”
After learning of the shooting, she rushed to the hospital, where she got the official news.
The aunt said that before Morgan left home that evening, he never said anything to her about his friend’s death.
“He was more private,” she recalled. She hosted a vigil on Friday for Morgan, prompting emotional reflections by friends.
“They were both stand up guys,” a friend of both victims posted on Facebook. “They thought they were Superman, always made everyone laugh and smile, always singing and dancing … & they were good friends.”
The deceased friends had similar interests, according to those who knew them.
They said Morgan was into dance while rap was Nichols’ preferred mode of creativity. “He was a well-respected neighborhood hero,” one friend said of Nichols.
“He was a great person, great personality … the life of the party,” added the friend, who gave his name as Chippy.