Two migrants were collared for a rash of moped raids where they snatched jewelry from unsuspecting New Yorkers, law enforcement sources said – as the number of scooter-borne robberies explodes citywide.
Luis Tovar Pacheco and Alvaro Martinez — Venezuela citizens living in the Bronx — were busted after a domestic violence complaint at Pacheco’s Laconia Avenue, police sources told The Post.
The arrests come on the heels of a Monday bust that locked up two other migrant men allegedly involved in a separate thieves’ ring that’s been stealing people’s cellphones right out of their hands, then hacking the devices and cleaning out the linked bank accounts.
But the sticky fingered pair picked up yesterday weren’t looking for cellphones — instead, they were searching for well-to-do New Yorkers wearing Rolexes, gold bracelets, watches or other jewelry, police sources said.
Then they’d flash a handgun and relieve the victims of their trappings before blend back into the many millions who call the Big Apple home.
“I hope these arrests give people confidence back in our city,” NYPD Capt. Tawee Theanthong, commander of the department’s central robbery unit, told The Post. “What you can’t insure is the loss of confidence and dignity people feel to have someone just walk up and take something from you.”
Cops believe the two men were active in two different “patterns,” or strings of crimes with linking traits, such as who committed the crime or how they did it.
After his arrest, Pacheco copped to a gunpoint robbery in a series of fall 2023 crimes that sources say also spread to Westchester County, New York and Bergen County, New Jersey — and two grand larcenies in another, police sources said.
Pacheco was allegedly the ringleader of the group, a loose consortium that had no traditional gang affiliation but was connected with other migrants who’ve found themselves on the wrong side of the law, according to sources.
Martinez admitted his guilt in at least one case connected to a series of six January snatch-and-grabs in Manhattan where suspects ripped chains right off people’s necks, then fled on mopeds, the sources said.
An explosion of moped-riding criminals
The MO of the alleged crimes has echoes of another group of moped-riding migrants who have allegedly been terrorizing New Yorkers since at least November. NYPD statistics that show a mammoth increase in the number of criminal patterns that rely on scooters.
In January 2023, cops were investigating just one such pattern, police said.
This year, they’re looking into 32 separate groups of related crimes — a whopping 3,200% increase.
The other conspiracy — allegedly led by a Venezuelan migrant named Victor Parra — focused more on seizing people’s cellphones so criminals could hack in and clear out their victims’ accounts before selling the device itself overseas.
Although Parra remains on the run, two other men — Cleyber Andrade, 19, and Juan Uzcatgui, 23 — were arraigned last night for crimes connected to the ring, which has been linked to at least 62 different instances of grand larceny in the Big Apple since November.
Cops and law enforcement experts told The Post it’s all part of a burgeoning, scooter-reliant crime wave that employs the sprightly little vehicles instead of bigger, more clumsy getaway cars.
“In other parts of the world, committing crimes on motorcycles and mopeds is not unheard of,” Brian Higgins, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former Bergen County police chief, told The Post on Wednesday.
Higgins added that mopeds afford criminals a number of advantages — including the element of surprise, which the marauders seize when they ride up on a sidewalk to grab something from a pedestrian.
“You’re not expecting it,” Higgins said. “And by the time they’re on top of you, they probably already have their hands on whatever it is they’re going to steal, be it a purse, or a chain. And then they’re out. They don’t even have to stop. It’s done in one fell swoop.”
Then the drivers jackrabbit into the city’s never-ending traffic, cutting between cars and quickly disappearing.
But the groups’ levels of sophistication also surprised Higgins, who said their use of hackers and understanding of banking apps implies they’re not just common street criminals.
If they’re not supported by some kind of overseas structure, he said, then they’re at least well-seasoned in their shadowy profession.
“I don’t think they’d have enough time to coordinate all this once they got here,” Higgins said, specifically referencing recently-arrived migrants like Parra. “This seems to be an organized crime that was put in place before they even got here. They know how to ramp it up quickly.
“This isn’t that they hung out one night, drinking a beer, trying to figure out a really good crime,” Higgins said. “There are too many steps in it.”
Cops strike back
Authorities have taken notice, and are trying to shoot the criminals’ horses out from under them.
Earlier this week, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz announced that her office teamed up with the NYPD to confiscate 43 scooters illegally parked on busy sidewalks in Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, Corona and Long Island City.
Nearly all were unregistered, she said in a Monday press release.
And that’s not the end, she said. The DA’s office is planning more operations in Queens to rid the streets of the unregistered vehicles.
“The often careless and dangerous operation of motorized scooters on our roads, and even our sidewalks, has become an urgent concern,” Katz said. “Their use to commit violent crimes and escape will not be tolerated and requires immediate action.”
