In two separate robberies last week of hundreds of dollars at Chicago retail stores, five Venezuelans were arrested, authorities said.
The first robbery occurred on Friday of last week, Fox News Digital reported. In that first crime, three Venezuelan immigrants stole more than $500 worth of merchandise from a Kohl’s store in Elmhurst, the DuPage County State’s Attorney’s Office said.
The three men were identified as Ilys Mary Ledesma Zapata, 37, Christian Johan Saavedra Omona, 21, and Braud Pineda Avendaño, 33. The first of them had a large magnet used to avoid anti-theft devices in the store, police alleged.
“For the second day in a row, my office has filed charges against individuals from Venezuela accused of stealing merchandise from a retail store,” DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin said, Fox News reported.
Second robbery
The second robbery at the hands of Venezuelan immigrants occurred several hours later, on Saturday afternoon.
In that incident, two men allegedly put $770 worth of clothing in a foil-lined bag and left the store without paying, according to the report from the state attorney’s office.
The two Venezuelan immigrants were identified as Lenguieyer Guevara Muro and Jinder Moisés Angulo Aparicio.
According to the police version cited by the outlet, Guevara Muro, 27, left the store with the bag and refused to stop when approached by loss prevention officers and an Oak Brook police officer. . They detailed that the man resisted when the police officer tried to stop him, which led to him being knocked to the ground and handcuffed.
For his part, Angulo Aparicio, 20, left the store a short time later and was detained without incident.
The five immigrants were charged with robbery and retail theft, the outlet reported. Only Guevara-Muro was being held in preventive detention, while a judge ordered the release of the other four defendants.
Modus operandi?
Authorities have warned of an increase in criminal activity after a series of retail robberies involving Venezuelan immigrants.
“We want everyone to be aware of the increase in criminal activity in the immigrant community from Chicago,” said Oak Brook Deputy Police Chief Reid Foltyniewicz, as reported by Fox News.
In early November, two other men of Venezuelan origin were arrested and accused of stealing nearly $3,000 in merchandise from a Macy’s store in Oak Brook, Illinois. The defendants were identified as Luis Méndez Gómez, 28, and Frank Montez Dávila, 23.
And a week earlier, two other Venezuelan immigrants were arrested for stealing more than $1,700 worth of products from the same store. The defendants in that case, Abel Barrios-Estava and Rafael Mata-Torres, were also released on condition that they use electronic monitoring devices.
These crimes also occur in the midst of the deportation of Venezuelan citizens that the Biden administration began to Venezuela.
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