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Stolen goods not gone forever

Owners get a chance to reclaim property that was pawned at a shop in a Sheriff's Office sting.

By CASEY CORA
Published June 29, 2007

CLEARWATER - A few plastic bags marked "offense 06-8019" could have ended up in a bin, just another item to be cataloged and stored in a Sheriff's Office evidence warehouse.

Instead, Vivica and Martin Ray got their stolen goods back.

The St. Petersburg couple discovered some of the stuff recently swiped from their home could turn up at a public inspection of stolen goods offered at the Pinellas County Sheriff's Evidence and Property Section, 4707 145th Ave. N on Thursday.

Martin Ray donned latex gloves and fingered through the nearly 200 DVDs he said were stolen from his home.

Sure enough, the DVDs turned up. So did some old VHS classics.

"Bruce Lee, " Ray said. "Enter the Dragon."

"It's like winning the lottery, " said sheriff's Detective Tim Flanigan as he knifed open the bags of evidence for Ray to inspect.

The Rays would go on to recover a stovetop griddle, a large beltsander, and a drill they said were stolen from their Meadowlawn home. They offered their own fingerprints as evidence.

But the movies were just some of the items purchased by undercover detectives posing as clerks in a pawn shop sting designed to catch area thieves.

So far, 11 people have been arrested. Investigators said they are closing in on six more.

Usually, stolen property is "gone forever, " said Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Cecelia Barreda. Thursday's event was a chance to turn the black market upside down.

"But here's an opportunity to get that stuff back, " she said.

But maybe nobody wanted that stuff anyway.

Only a few people turned out to recover the more than 1, 000 stolen items purchased by undercover detectives in the sting, which spanned nine months.

Two bottles of St. Ive's skin lotion in an evidence bag went unexamined. So did a "6-second Abs" device.

A near-mint foosball table practically begged for action, and only a few people looked at more than a dozen individual bags of jewelry.

What happens if no one claims all that stuff? "It then becomes property of the Sheriff's Office, " said Sheriff's Sgt. Dan Carron, adding that the items could be used in future Sheriff's Office undercover operations.

[Last modified June 28, 2007, 23:25:56]