Authorities are closing in on a sprawling network of South American burglarers who arrive as “tourists,” then plunder the homes of the rich—eluding police on three continents.
local detectives suspect the perpetrators, after researching their quarry online, tend to home in on houses of well-to-do Asian and Middle Eastern residents due to the fact that, as the investigators put it, the “burglars believe they sometimes keep family wealth in gold and jewelry or have large amounts of money on hand because they may run businesses that rely on cash.”The thieves have been crisscrossing the globe.
The husband says he contacted the police, who, he claims, offered little help. Over the next few weeks, the couple learned about two similar break-ins nearby. Set on locating the criminals, they decided to hire David Bolton, a well-known Miami private investigator. Bolton, who has helped solve several cases involving the Latin American underworld, tells me that he had first heard about the tourist-thief crime wave the year before.
When I talk with this anonymous source, the person says Maldonado seems almost surprised at the way his fortunes have unfolded. Maldonado’s “history is crazy,” my source tells me. I gather from my talks with the source that Maldonado grew up in Pudahuel, a dusty residential and industrial municipality in the western sprawl of metro Santiago, near the international airport and far removed from the wealthier central and eastern portions of the Chilean capital.
He flew to Spain, where he joined an 11-member, mainly Chilean crew. According to media reports, they plagued the Madrid region for three months until they were busted after reportedly robbing more than 40 houses. He spent another year behind bars before being deported back to Chile, only to resurface in Argentina. He secured a false passport there, the source contends, and stole enough to hop a flight to Miami. Once in the States, Maldonado linked up with other Chileans already there.
In describing the tourist thieves’ lifestyle, police authorities and the person with knowledge of Maldonado’s world say that most come for a short time. “They steal [up to] $40,000 and go back” to Chile quickly, says the anonymous contact. But Maldonado went a different route. The source says Maldonado liked “the good life,” the money, and the people he got to know in the U.S. Maldonado stayed longer. That proved to be his downfall.
Bonilla has been tracing the Chilean gangs for most of the past two years. But he had no idea how extensive the operations were when he zeroed in on Maldonado and his comrades on that frigid evening in January 2020. After that night, he says, “my investigation led me to something we never thought of. It kept on going, opening up from there.”
There, he got in touch with the older cousin who originally introduced him to stealing for a living. According to Bonilla and private detective Bolton, Maldonado and his cousin reconstituted a crew in California and, for the next nine months, went searching for America, “pillaging the whole way,” says Bonilla.
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