By Chris Markuns
Staff Writer
Sunday, November
9, 2003
When things go according to plan -- and they usually do -- it's
a matter of getting in, out, and spending the victim's money before they even know
they've been hit, an almost ethereal theft that conjures thoughts of the
fortune-tellers their people are stereotypically known for.
But when one elderly couple in Kingston, N.H., turned out not to
be as soft a target as expected last month, the call to police and the ensuing car
chase, foot chase and stakeout led to three rare "gypsy" arrests, with two
escaping.
The technique -- an attempted distraction by a phony utility
worker as accomplices try to slip into the home -- quickly tied the suspects to a
similar burglary in Windham, N.H., and now possibly to recent strikes in Lawrence,
Haverhill, Portsmouth, N.H. and a $59,000 grab in Manchester, N.H., among others.
"There's no question we're dealing with the same people,"
insisted Lawrence Police Chief John J. Romero, describing "gypsy" cons as
an annual problem that rarely produces arrests. "Every year we get two or three
cases, and the minute the heat's on, they're gone."
Arrested suspects Mike Miller, Steve Mitchell and
Joseph McGill are gypsies with a lower-case "g," according to police, using
the term to mean nomadic con artists, who happen to share an ethnicity, preying on
elderly homeowners throughout the nation. But police and people who testified
against them at recent bail hearings also identified them as Gypsies with a
capital "G," members of the millennium-old Romany people -- or Rom Gypsies, as
they're often called in America -- known the world over for their traveling,
out-of-the-mainstream lifestyle.
So while the investigation has police looking hard at this
particular group for burglaries throughout the region, it also means delving into
a nationwide criminal subculture that experts say continues to plague a country
that hasn't yet fully realized it exists. And it all must happen while walking a
delicate line, as law enforcement wants to acknowledge the scam artists'
ethnically rooted lifestyle and techniques, but do it without maligning an entire
race.
"They represent one of the largest groups of organized crime
working today," said retired Milwaukee police Lt. Dennis Marlock, who spent
31 years investigating such groups and founded Professionals Against Confidence
Crime (PACC) in 1987. "But most people don't even know gypsies exist."
'College of crime'
The education usually starts with the same story.
It's about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and the Gypsy who
stole the fourth nail that was to anchor him on the cross, either through his head
or his heart, depending on the version. From that point on, children of criminal
Gypsies are told, God granted Gypsies the right to steal.
"That story is passed down from generation to generation," said
Michael Deppe, formerly a con artist specialist with the Lake Station,
Ind., Police Department, and now a lawyer, PACC member and teacher of a confidence
crimes course at Indiana University.
Just as noncriminal Gypsies inherit crafts like metal working,
the minority that make their living outside the law also begin working at it very,
very early, says Deppe.
"They grow up in the college of crime," he said. "It's passed on
from generation to generation, and any question you ask a gypsy con man, he will
have the answer because he's been asked it many times before.
These family businesses run the entire gamut, said Deppe,
everything from fake radon detection to phony contests to more elaborate,
high-stakes insurance scams. But locally in recent years, police say, it's mainly
been ploys like those used to hit two Lawrence homes in a day this July.
In one instance, Romero said, a 90-year-old woman was kept out
back for roughly half an hour by a clean-cut, professional-looking "city employee"
who needed to look at the city-owned land behind her house. While telling her he
was on the cell phone with his boss, he was talking to a pair of men rifling
through her home, later seen by neighbors loading a box into a truck, its license
plates obscured in the back window. They got $50 and a gold pin.
Why they persistently target the elderly isn't hard to
understand, police say: They're often more friendly, are home during the day,
often keep cash in the home, don't offer much of a physical threat and tend to
make poor witnesses.
But choosing a target isn't the only skill involved. It takes
only a minutes for them to check typical hot spots for hiding money, Deppe
says, such as dresser drawers, under mattresses, and in the freezer, "and they can
look at costume jewelry (and pick out valuables) with more efficiency than your
jeweler."
They leave little trace by replacing disturbed items -- victims
often don't know they've been robbed for days or weeks, by which time they may not
remember the visit or have other guests to suspect -- and even if a homeowner
catches on early, it's usually too late.
Once they leave, it's with a disappearing act, often with a
switch of vehicles nearby -- a car full of men will swap with a truck full of
women -- or with the use of phony license plates.
"Usually," said Deppe, "it's pure luck when they're
caught."
And if they are, Kingston Police Chief Donald W. Briggs Jr.
can tell you there's a whole new mess to sort out. He's getting a taste of the
false identities, false vehicle registrations and other misinformation with
Mitchell, Miller and McGill. Incidentally, says Marlock,
"Mitchell" and "Miller" are extremely popular aliases among criminal Gypsies,
since they can more easily blend into the thousands of others found in every major
phone book.
"Identity issues are very, very complex when you deal with these
individuals," said Briggs. "They use many aliases, many dates of birth, many
Social Security numbers, many addresses; they do all kinds of things to register
vehicles fraudulently."
His department is still working out the registration of the van
used in the Kingston burglary attempt.
"It doesn't come back stolen, it doesn't come back registered to
anybody," he said. "It's registered to a nonexistent address (in Philadelphia)."
And to make sure all that effort pays off, says Romero,
"they all get great lawyers." Marlock points out it's not their money
anyway -- "They'll just steal it back from someone else," he said -- and Deppe
calls it "utilizing the system against itself."
"It's just the cost of doing business," said Deppe. "They
look at the cost of attorneys like a restaurant looks at the cost of plates."
Those attorneys' main job is usually just to get a reasonable
bail set, Deppe said, "because they're going to flee the jurisdiction
anyway." Marlock once had gypsies post $500,000 cash bail, and locally
McGill walked away on $10,000 surety, though Mitchell and Miller are being held on
$275,000. Briggs has his own suspicions about McGill and the two men never caught.
"I think they are gone from our area," he said, "and probably
gone from the state of New Hampshire."
Statistics on criminal Gypsies are hard to come by -- Marlock
says a study he did in 1987 more or less established law enforcement wasn't
keeping track, and they often lie about their ethnicity on police reports anyway
-- but Deppe routinely provides a stat to his students that he thinks sums
up confidence crime in general.
Of every 500 confidence crimes, he says, fewer then 200 are
reported. Of those 200, there are fewer than five apprehensions. Of those five,
fewer than three are convicted. Of those three, just one goes to jail.
"Not a Gypsy anymore"
If you had the history of ethnic Gypsies, says David Nemeth,
you'd be sensitive too.
A University of Toledo professor who teaches courses on Gypsy
life, culture and ethnicity -- and lived with some for five years over three
decades ago -- Nemeth looks for opportunities to paint a different picture
of the Gypsies wandering North America, and explain why they often react severely
to being typecast as criminals.
They've done well quite here, according to Nemeth. He
said the U.S. Census found 10 or so categories -- with Rom Gypsy the purest ethnic
Gypsy -- while very rough North American population estimates range wildly from
60,000 to 1.5 million.
But with a percentage of that population earning a living in the
con game, says Nemeth, it's overshadowing "the richness of the Gypsy culture."
While Nemeth says they have no love for Rom Gypsies who live by the scam --
"Eventually they become not a Gypsy anymore," he said -- they don't want the term
applied strictly to traveling con artists.
And that is when it gets particularly complicated for police
officials who want to avoid offending the public or being sued. Briggs
avoided ethnic designations last week in favor of descriptions such as "people who
roam from town to town."
But many in law enforcement use the analogy that gypsies are to
the Romany as mafia are to the Italians, and lament that criminal Gypsies use the
sensitive issue to hide behind. They often bring the term up in court before
prosecutors do to claim ethnic persecution, Marlock said, and an agency
that starts to get good at stopping Gypsy criminals "gets attacked by Romany
leaders."
Accurately recording who commits a crime -- by appearance,
ethnicity, behavior or anything else that distinguishes the perpetrator -- is an
important part of making sure it doesn't happen again, Marlock insists.
Within the Gypsy criminal world, for instance, he knows women who con a homeowner
by saying they just moved nearby and need a phone are Polish Gypsies; and a large
group that floods a store for distraction while others find the safe in the office
are Yugoslavian Gypsies.
It comes down to a battle for the word.
"There are very complex arguments about what we should call
them," said Nemeth, referring to criminal groups and pointing out nobody
would ever call them "Jews" or "blacks" even if they were.
But while that debate continues, law enforcement will continue
fighting its own battles. Chiefs like Briggs and Romero fight to
remind residents -- particularly the elderly -- never to let anyone in the home
unless they were expected, and never hesitate to confirm their credentials while
they're locked outside.
And groups like Marlock's -- he knows of only one other
-- will fight to get law enforcement more interested. His PACC advertises seminars
on confidence scams but gets few takers, he said, because the crimes aren't
violent or in-your-face enough. The answers for now seem strictly in public
education and legislation -- the heavier jail sentences passed in Wisconsin, or
routinely higher bails with the forfeited money going to victims, as suggested by
Deppe.
The less-pleasant alternative, says Marlock, is that
America's unknown organized crime effort graduates to something that gets it
noticed. While gypsies used to avoid violence because it drew too much attention,
he said, the younger generation is discovering drug dealing and the aggression
that comes with it.
"As one gypsy told me," he said, "we're not
going to stop until you stop us."
