Roving Group of Thieves Hits Midwest Antiques Malls

by David Hewett

Want to see a video clip of thieves cleaning out a jewelry showcase in an antiques mall? Go to the Web site for the Roscoe Antique Mall (www.roscoeantiquemall.com), click on the "Booths & Showcases," and then click on "A Booth Robbery March 19 2008 - Video" and see three men pull off the theft of jewelry valued somewhere between $30,000 and $35,000 from the Roscoe Antique Mall in South Beloit, Illinois, on March 19.

Co-owner Dennis Stomberg narrates the three-minute-long clip that was captured on concealed video cameras on that Wednesday afternoon. His wife, Gaylene, described the videotaping. "We didn't put it [videotape] all up there at our Web site; we had to watch them a lot longer than that to get what you see there. It was obvious they had been in the shop before because they went right back to the exact showcase holding the jewelry. Once we realized what had happened and began calling other shop owners, we learned they had already hit some of the other malls."

This is more than just the theft of a few pieces of costume jewelry. The approximate value of the jewelry and watches taken from antiques malls in the immediate area is well over $50,000 and may be as much as $100,000.

The Roscoe Antique Mall is a sizable enterprise. "We have twenty-two thousand square feet," Gaylene Stomberg said. "We have one hundred ten exhibitors renting two hundred booths and showcases." South Beloit is a small community in Winnebago County, near Rockford, the second-largest city in the state. "We reported the theft to David Watson of South Beloit, our local policeman," she added.

The Stombergs are aware that thefts at an antiques mall aren't the first priority of law enforcement, so they took steps on their own to contact other shop owners. "We have been on the phones for days," Gaylene Stomberg said in early April. "I bet we called every group shop in the area, and that's how we discovered how many others had been hit by the same gang. Some of them had caught the thefts on their security cameras, but some of the smaller ones didn't have cameras.

"All the ones I heard about happened the same as ours. They'd scoped us out and knew where the jewelry was. They definitely were professionals. It only took them four or five minutes, walking in and out of that booth, before they actually walked out with all the goods.

"When other shop owners saw the pieces [of video] we put up on our Web site, some recognized some of the people as the ones who had been in their shops before they discovered the robberies.

"As the word has been getting out, it's coming back to me that many other malls have been hit. I talked with Odessa Mall in Madison, and they had been hit for the same type of thing, jewelry, and one case had held seventeen thousand dollars' worth of jewelry. They did not have video."

At Antiques on East State in Rockford, "which is within twenty miles of us, they saw our video and read the warning to be on watch for anybody looking like this who comes into your mall. They called me and said, 'Those are the exact same three that robbed us in October.' They took twenty thousand dollars' worth of jewelry.

"They have closeup video of them breaking into the case; they went through four locks in less than ten seconds, cleaned out the whole case, and got out of the mall."

According to Stomberg, the score reads like this: Roscoe Antique Mall puts its losses at between $30,000 and $35,000; the Odessa Mall in Madison lost $17,000; an unnamed small mall lost $2000 in watches; and Antiques on East State was hit last October for $20,000 in jewelry. That totals at least $69,000. There are others for which the exact losses aren't known (at least four others were hit, Stomberg said, including malls in Plano, Sandwich, Geneva, and Woodstock).

The owner of a small shop just three miles from South Beloit, in Geneva, had been hit by the group about a month before her robbery, Gaylene Stomberg said. The descriptions of the group who hit that shop coincided with hers. "They are well-dressed people wearing long dark jackets, very European looking. They have dark hair, dark eyes," Stomberg said. "They look like somebody who you'd like to sell antiques to."

The police officer Gaylene Stomberg notified, officer David Watson of the South Beloit police force, was out on patrol when we attempted to speak with him. He did not return our messages.

The phone calls Stomberg made have resulted in preventing at least one potential theft, she said. "I called the Peru Antique Mall, about seventy-five miles from here. The manager, Jack, called me back last Friday [March 21] and said, 'They came in.'"

Evidently the group recognized that the mall attendants had been alerted because they left, empty-handed, within four minutes of entering. The positive part of that brief encounter is that they were photographed on security cameras, and their license plate number was recorded.

The security people at the East State Street shop also got video shots of the group, with closeups of faces, according to Stomberg. The troubling part of the heightened security is that the number of those identified as potential thieves seems to vary, indications that a gang, or large group, is involved.

Gaylene Stomberg is very aware of that possibility. A man who is involved in a crime-stopping organization told her that these robberies were probably committed by an organized band of thieves. "He said they're very good, very elusive, and will switch cars, switch the people involved, and can send in as many as it takes to do the job.

"That's why it is so necessary for us to communicate with each other. We have to pass on the information when something like this happens," she said.

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