From the City and County of Los Angeles, San Diego, Arizona, New York, and Maryland, there has been a rash of crimes across the country. Burglaries and robberies are not something new; they have been around since before the penal codes were written. 

However, a new form of these crimes has taken root, and they are using tools and tactics not often seen in real life, but rather on the silver screen. Movies like "Heat" and "Ocean's 11" show burglary and robbery crews that are well-trained, organized, and thorough. These crime crews are using WiFi jammers, sophisticated surveillance and counter-surveillance techniques, and more. 

Just this Easter, $30 million cash was stolen from a money storage facility. Last November, a thief who stole $5.5 million from luxury homes in Los Angeles was sentenced to 31 years in prison. His victims included Usher, Adam Lambert, and Real Housewives of Beverly Hills stars Dorit and Paul Kemsley.

But this particular type of burglary involving tourists has seen an uptick in recent years according to LAPD Deputy Chief Alan Hamilton. 

According to sources within the LAPD that cannot be identified due to their positions, the suspects committing these crimes are foreign nationals from Chile and Colombia who enter both legally and illegally via air travel and the southern land border. Chileans are allowed to travel to the United States via air travel on the Visa Waiver Program (VWP), where they can fly into the U.S. without a visa and stay for no longer than 90 days. Colombian crews enter the U.S. illegally through the southern border. 

One detective described a Colombian crime crew they were tracking as professionally trained by either military or intelligence agencies. The detective said that the crew utilized surveillance tactics not seen by any crime crew they had seen, and said that the crew was able to identify LAPD surveillance units and successfully evade their tracking efforts. 

The detective worked several of these crews over eight months, saying that the crews were operating so well and efficiently that detectives, at first, did not know the crimes were being committed by professional crews. They thought the crimes were exactly what they looked like: random crimes that just happen now and then. That was until they noticed a pattern, and started to piece together similar crimes being committed with the same methods. 

Back in November 2023, a brazen highway robbery occurred on a Southern California freeway outside of Los Angeles. A man was robbed after his vehicle was hit by two other vehicles and disabled on the freeway. That's where it gets interesting. The robbery was executed by one of these crews, driving three (that officials know of) separate cars. The suspects had been following this man from the jewelry store where he worked. 

In fact, the crew had been casing the store and the employee for several days before deciding to execute their plan. They purposefully staged an accident to disable the victim's car; they knew exactly where he kept all the items and went straight for the, before abandoning their two crashed cars and escaping in the getaway car. 

I mentioned the movie "Heat" because the detective said, "These crews make the one on 'Heat' look like amateurs." The crews know how to spot law enforcement officers from units who receive training from some of the best at the FBI and "other agencies" in surveillance, tracking, and more. 

Crews like this are hitting all over. They follow victims to their homes and their work, waiting days and days to get a routine down and pick the perfect location for a mobile takedown or times to burglarize their homes. A detective with the LAPD's Robbery Homicide Division says that due to California law regarding illegal immigrants not being reportable to federal immigration authorities, the suspects they have arrested are released without the feds being told. Due to this, the feds never get told about them and never get to pick them up for deportation or anything. They are specifically going after wealthy victims, and properties that are owned by wealthy individuals. These crimes are becoming more and more common. 

“They tend to not carry guns. They don’t want to get gun charges,” [LAPD Deputy Chief Alan] Hamilton said. “They sometimes carry jamming devices to disable home security systems.”

While Chileans are among the most common members of these criminal enterprises, Hamilton said, they are seeing other South Americans including Peruvians, Ecuadoreans and Colombians as well. The LAPD and other local law enforcement agencies have formed a task force dedicated to the problem.

“I can tell you that we have a significant increase in burglaries from organized groups that are outside this country, that are coming into the country, and they are targeting high-end residents,” LAPD Chief Dominic Choi said at Tuesday’s Police Commission meeting.

According to authorities in Orange County, California, they see the same problems and restrictions when it comes to prosecuting these cases. Saying in part that cooperation from South American countries is almost non-existent, which makes it almost impossible to link suspects to more than one crime, this also allowing the suspects to receive less time when sentenced. 

Spitzer said the Chilean government has refused to abide by a requirement to provide the U.S. with the criminal history of Chilean citizens who use a visa program called Electronic System for Travel Authorization, or ESTA. The program allows Chileans residents to enter the U.S. for 90-day periods an unlimited number of times. Visa requirements vary between countries, but travelers from several other South American nations typically require visas with tighter restrictions before coming to the U.S.

Without criminal histories of Chileans, prosecutors have been largely handcuffed in trying to prove defendants are linked beyond a single burglary charge, Spitzer said.

Lessons to be learned from these crimes are abundant and clear: Always check your surroundings and try to change up your routines so as not to present yourself as predictable. A big thing to be cognizant of, also, is to not come out of a bank with a large amount of cash in an envelope, or leave a jewelry store with merchandise in an easily recognizable container. Make yourself look as unattractive to a robber as possible.