Edmonton police bust vehicle scam, recover $500K in stolen goods
EDMONTON A man who scrimped and saved $20,000 to buy himself a new truck is now making payments on a vehicle he no longer owns after it was caught up in a vehicle cloning operation busted by city police.
Members of the city police auto theft unit seized the truck Wednesday after a five-week probe into a sophisticated organized crime ring that resulted in three arrests, 16 charges, and the seizure of close to $500,000 in stolen property and drugs.
“We are talking about an organized group of high level fraudsters,” Det. Mark Kassian said Thursday after relaying the story of the innocent victim.
“That’s the unfortunate thing about this. There is no recourse with private sales.”
The operation centred on a home in the Hamptons area and a rented commercial bay near 121A Street and 121 Avenue.
Eight mostly high-end vehicles were seized, including a stolen 2008 BMW X 6, a 2008 Mercedes ML55 and two 2014 Range Rovers.
Kassian said the group created and installed fake vehicle identification numbers (VIN) — the unique number that identifies every vehicle manufactured — and then used fake bills of sale, insurance documents and forged identification to register the vehicles to “legitimize their assets.”
Half of the cars stolen were from private owners and the other half from dealerships using purloined key fobs, he said.
He said in an average of four days, the vehicles would be stolen, “re-VINed” registered and listed as a legitimate active vehicle in the registration system.
Within a week some of the vehicles had their registration documents changed three times in different cities in order to throw off authorities, he said.
“This was definitely a sophisticated group,” said Kassian.
“This is one of the first groups that we’ve seen that tried to legitimize the assets in such a mass quantity.”
Prompted by a tip about an at- tempted insurance fraud, officers ran the vehicle details and decoded the VIN, discovering the vehicle in question was not in fact produced by the auto manufacturer. A paper trail then led to the identification of the suspects.
“Every layer of onion that we peeled off led to something else to the point that we are eight vehicles seized and we do have some others identified,” said Kassian.
In one instance, a Range Rover stolen from a Calgary dealer at 2:30 a.m. on a Sunday was dropped off at a location in Edmonton hours later and by Thursday morning it had already had labels printed off, registration and insurance documents and was in the process of being “re-VINed” when police intervened.
“It’s quite concerning that they are able to infiltrate the registration system the way they are and potentially victimize innocent purchasers,” Kassian.
Last year city police recovered just over 90 cloned vehicles and they are on track to do the same this year, he added.
“We’ve definitely shut down this operation,” he said, but he admits that there are likely more groups doing the same.
“I think we would be naive to think that this is the only group doing this.
“There is obviously profitability in this, otherwise they wouldn’t be doing it.”
Just under 270 grams of cocaine worth about $27,000 along with a “quantity of marijuana” was also seized as part of the case.
Lindy Belloc, 42, and Idrissa Diarra, 38, are jointly charged with numerous counts of possession of property obtained by crime over $5,000 and uttering forged documents.
Diarra was additionally charged with possession of a controlled substance for the purpose of trafficking and additional counts of possession of property obtained by crime over $5,000.
Alemar Villegas 32, is charged with uttering a forged document and possession of a controlled substance.
Charges are pending on a fourth and fifth individual.