He was a teacher, a cop - and then the head of one of the region's biggest car-theft rings.
Ronald Weick's unusual career path won him some temporary riches but led yesterday to the start of an 11-year prison term.
The no-parole sentence imposed by U.S. District Judge J. Curtis Joyner in Philadelphia was the maximum permitted by Weick's sentencing guidelines.
Weick, 46, was ordered to forfeit to the government a boat named "Cash Flow" and several homes in Ocean City, N.J., worth about $1.5 million. He also must try to make restitution of about $370,000, although he claims he's broke.
A 1973 graduate of Kean College, in Union, N.J., Weick taught elementary school in Paterson, N.J., for several years, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Mitchell E. Zamoff.
In 1977, he joined the Ridgefield Township, N.J., Police Department - only to be fired in 1984 after he was arrested for an auto insurance fraud scam, Zamoff said.
A decade later, Weick was running "one of the largest auto theft and chop shop operations" in this region out of an auto body shop in Auburn, Schuylkill County, the prosecutor said.
Between 1993 and 1997, Weick admittedly orchestrated the theft of more than 300 vehicles, mostly Jeep Wranglers and Cherokees, said Zamoff.
Some were stolen in Philadelphia, but most were rustled in North Jersey and New York. He paid thieves up to $2,000 for a hot car.
After vehicle identification numbers were removed in his chop shop and replaced with numbers taken from wrecked cars he'd purchased, Weick resold the cars, usually at dealers' auctions.
Weick had pleaded guilty earlier to operating a chop shop, interstate transportation of stolen cars and altering vehicle identification numbers.
He was one of 12 defendants indicted by a federal grand jury in Philadelphia last August after an informant's tip led Pennsylvania State Police to seize 13 stolen cars, mostly from Weick's chop shop.
All 12 pleaded guilty, and some are serving prison terms of up to 50 months, Zamoff said.
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