Men suspected of stealing from Perry County businesses sought in other parts of Mo., around U.S.

Authorities in other parts of Missouri and in other states are also seeking those accused of thefts from several Perry County businesses.

Law enforcement agencies are tracking a suspected crime ring that slips unseen into business offices of various industries at night and makes off with thousands in payroll checks and petty cash.

The eight-member group led by a man wanted in Missouri and Wisconsin is thought to be responsible for thefts from four Perry County businesses earlier this month.

Perry County Sheriff Gary Schaaf said thieves hit Earthworks, Semco Stone, Brewster Sawmill and Seguin Moreau between March 14 and 19 for a total of $7,000 in payroll checks and petty cash. All four businesses were hit during closed hours and there was no visible evidence of burglary, Schaaf said.

Jeff Steffen, a detective who works financial crime cases for the Carthage Police Department in Carthage, Mo., has been tracking the group's activities since similar thefts were reported late last July in and near Carthage.

Steffen has so far connected the group to 37 other incidents in Missouri, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, New York and Wisconsin, and he is far from finished looking for crimes that fit the group's M.O., he said. He also believes he has the group's leader identified.

Steffen said Baudel Graciano, 29, is the suspected leader of the group. Graciano has active warrants in Missouri and Wisconsin for theft and forgery. Other group members have been harder to identify because the roster changes frequently, Steffen said. He and other law enforcement agencies are attempting to track movement of the group with several tactics, including running and matching fingerprints from payroll checks cashed by the group and linking similar theft reports through the use of database systems.

The group most often targets manufacturing, distributing or shipping companies with business offices that are likely to have payroll checks on hand and are on or near major highways or interstates, Steffen said. His investigation into the group's activities has found they leave little or no sign of forced entry so businesses aren't alerted to missing items for several days. In one case, the group is believed to have taken checks and replaced them with paper to make it look to a company's employees that checks were still there.

Group members take the checks to banks in nearby towns and use fake IDs to cash them, and stay in any one area for about three days before moving on, Steffen said.

"They will cash the checks to around $20,000 and then leave the area," he said.

He said he hasn't quite yet figured out why the group cuts off around that amount. He believes the group operates this way weekly while constantly on the move. He only knows of one instance that he believes the group went back to the same town twice in one month, he said.

Steffen said he hasn't yet calculated how much the group could be responsible for stealing in Missouri, but believes they may have been in operation as long as four years, meaning that amount could be significant.

"I think it's going to be big by the time we get them all linked up, because there are agencies in other states reporting huge losses that will add to what we have and all that we don't know about yet," he said.

He said he expects the number of incidents the group is responsible for to grow and that it takes time to gather them all together because of the variation of agencies' reporting methods.

The group's constant mobility will make them difficult to catch, Steffen said. He hopes an observant bank teller with an eye to picking out a fake ID could be the key to their capture.

"Other than that, I am just waiting for them to make a mistake. Someone's going to have to call us and tip us off for us to get them," he said.

Law enforcement believe the members of the group are of Hispanic descent and drive several different vehicles, including a dark gray or dark silver late-model Ford Windstar minivan. The group's vehicles will often have fake or temporary tags, Steffen said.

He hopes business owners with offices that keep payroll checks on hand for distribution to employees will consider alarm systems and video surveillance, he said, which would likely deter the group from a break-in.

In Perry County, Schaaf reports that the group members cased the businesses a day or two before they committed the thefts. Group members entered the businesses and asked for job applications, Schaaf said. Steffen said he has not known the group to use that tactic before, but still believes the same people are responsible.

eragan@semissourian.com

388-3627

Pertinent address:

Perryville, MO

St. Mary, MO

Carthage, MO