Thieves

Two travelers were taking a cross-country trip through the Mid-West. After eating lunch at a restaurant, they returned to their car to find that thieves had stolen not only their suitcases, but also the car's bucket seats. The couple continued their drive sitting on lawn chairs. Sounds like a bad joke? Don't get caught laughing. Thousands of thefts occur every year to unsuspecting and/or uninformed tourists. The American Express Travelers Cheques Company has come out with a list of practical tips for safe travel.

ERIE - State Police are looking for whoever stole $40,000 worth of sports collectible cards from a van parked at Presque Isle Downs & Casino. State gaming-enforcement officers told the Erie Times-News that the thieves smashed the window of a van owned by Joseph Hocevar, of Chagrin Falls, Ohio. The cards were reported stolen Sunday night. Police did not immediately say why the man had the cards with him at the time. But authorities believe that someone followed him by car to the casino and stole the cards while he was inside.

Police last night encircled Center City's Wanamaker building, which was all decked out for the holidays and tempting to would-be thieves. Two men apparently couldn't resist the temptation. Shortly after the last shoppers filed out at 9 p.m., security workers told police they thought they spotted a pair strolling across the store monitors, shopping the aisles of retail-theft heaven. But security couldn't catch anyone. Sixth District police arrived and surrounded the block-square building.

With the number of auto thefts on the increase in the area, the Insurance Federation of Pennsylvania has some tips for car owners to avoid becoming victims. While it is impossible to end auto theft, the idea is to make it more difficult for the thieves, said Lee Feldinger, director of information for the Philadelphia-based insurance trade association. A brochure, "Forty-nine Tips to Trip up a Car Thief," is available by calling the association's hotline, 1-800-222-1750. Feldinger's suggestions: Always lock your car and keep the keys with you. Do not leave a spare set inside or outside the car. Thieves know all the hiding places.

Two men broke through the side wall of Browne's Jewelry Store at Walnut Street and Burlington Avenue in Delanco early yesterday morning and made off with 21 watches valued at $3,300, police said. Police arrested one suspect, who was found in a shed about a block from the store, and are seeking a second man. The thieves punched two holes in a side wall of the store to get inside. John Browne, the store's owner, said the holes were about four feet apart. The second hole, about 3 feet by 18 inches, was made because the burglars could not get through the first hole, police said.

Two years after Philadelphia officials took initial steps to thwart thieves who steal properties using fraudulent deeds, hundreds of homeowners are still being victimized. So it's good to hear that City Council members Bill Greenlee and Maria Quiñones-Sánchez are taking steps to provide better safeguards. The scam artists who forge paperwork to acquire Philadelphia deeds - effectively stealing homes out from under their unsuspecting owners - are exacting a steep price from law-abiding citizens for living in the city.

Their annual confab was dubbed the "Predators' Ball. " They made big money - but they did it by breaking just about every law in Wall Street's book. They knew they were wrong, and they didn't care. As one trader said to a cohort he had just compromised, "Welcome to the world of being a sleaze. " Welcome, now, to James B. Stewart's Den of Thieves, a fascinating tell-all about one of Wall Street's worst moments. Books on Tape has just released it as a full-length audio (19 1/2 hours; $19.50 rental, $104 purchase)

RE ELMER Smith's Aug. 7 column: Thank you for have the courage to speak the truth and name all the corporate thieves. Especially the ones in D.C.: Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush, who also pulled off the biggest coup in American history - 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The GOP continues to rely on people not criticizing the government when we are at war. Well, last time I checked, there had never been any declaration of war, formal or otherwise. President Bush now wants the U.S. to start a confrontation or war with Iraq.

Maybe the theft was a political statement against boring, self-serving rhetoric. But if it was such a statement, thieves who took two wall mounted video cameras in City Council chambers forgot the other two cameras on rear walls. Yesterday's Council session was televised. More likely, somebody saw a way to boost $30,000 in equipment out from under the noses of the city's top politicians. Hearings were held Tuesday but if the cameras were gone, nobody - including the media - noticed.

Maybe they did it for money. Or maybe they just needed an easy way to get around town. Whatever the reason, cops are on the lookout for the thieves who took 13 all-terrain vehicles and motorcycles from the Philadelphia Police Department's impound lot early yesterday. "If anyone knows anything about these thefts, please contact us at 215-686-3183," said Capt. Steve Glenn, commander of the Southwest Detective Division, which is handling the case. The thefts occurred sometime between 4:30 and 6:30 a.m. at the lot, he said.

NEW YORK - A gang of cyber-criminals stole $45 million in a matter of hours by hacking their way into a database of prepaid debit cards and then fanning out around the globe to drain cash machines, federal prosecutors said Thursday. Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch called it "a massive 21st-century bank heist" and compared its size to the Lufthansa heist in the late 1970s immortalized in the film Goodfellas . Lynch said the fraudsters had moved with astounding speed to loot financial institutions around the world.

The perfect crime has long been a concept best left to Hollywood writers, not East Coast goodfellas. But this one was close. As St. Patrick's Day came to an end 23 years ago, two men dressed as police got into Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, cuffed the guards to a basement pipe, and made off with 13 works of art, including ones by Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Degas. The loot, valued at $500 million, made the heist the largest in U.S. history. On Monday, the FBI shone a new spotlight on the old crime, one with a local twist.

BEIJING - Beijing has hotly denied accusations of official involvement in massive cyberattacks against foreign targets, insinuating such activity is the work of rogues. But at least one element cited by Internet experts points to professional cyberspies: China's hackers take the weekend off. Accusations of state-sanctioned hacking took center stage last month after a detailed report by a U.S.-based Internet security firm Mandiant. It added to growing suspicions that the Chinese military was not only stealing national defense secrets and harassing dissidents but also pilfering information from foreign companies that could be worth millions or even billions of dollars.

BRUSSELS, Belgium - When the armored car set off for the Brussels airport carrying $50 million worth of precious stones from Antwerp's diamond district, eight gunmen knew all about it. One of the biggest diamond heists in recent memory was about to go down. The thieves surely knew it would be too risky to make their move in Antwerp, which is the world capital of diamond-cutting, 27 miles from the airport. The city's diamond industry has 2,000 surveillance cameras, police monitoring, and countless identity controls to protect its $200 million in daily trade of rough and polished gems.

JOHN MOGCK lost his wife twice. The first time was in November, when Rita Mogck died of ovarian cancer. She passed away in their Bustleton home. They were married 48 years. The second time was on Jan. 24. That morning, burglars invaded Mogck's home and carted off a bedroom safe. It contained Mogck's collection of rare gold and silver coins, $4,000 in cash and all his important documents. It also held Rita's ashes. Mogck, 71, planned to fly with them to Hanau, Germany - Rita's birthplace - for burial.

POLICE are on the hunt for four men who kidnapped an elderly Chester County couple, robbed their jewelry store and fled in the victims' car. The incident began about 7 p.m. Thursday, when four masked men, wielding handguns, approached Howard Zenker outside his home on Wooded Way in Berwyn, forced entry and stole credit cards and other items from the house, police said. Two of the assailants then forced the husband to drive to the couple's store, Shuler's Jewelers, in East Norriton, where the robbers stole jewelry and money, police said.

In Philadelphia, with its abundance of abandoned homes and an overwhelmed bureaucracy, it's pretty easy to steal a house. All a thief needs is money for the real estate transfer fees and a crooked notary to certify a forged deed. Chances are the thief won't get caught because the city hasn't placed a high priority on stopping deed thefts. That just adds to the anguish and frustration of unsuspecting people who have literally had their homes stolen from under them. The police don't keep track of how many houses are reported stolen, and the District Attorney's Office is mostly interested in thefts valued at $50,000 or above.

SAN FRANCISCO - In this tech-savvy city teeming with commuters and tourists, the cellphone has become a top target of robbers who use stealth, force and sometimes guns. Nearly half of all robberies in San Francisco this year are cell phone-related, police say, and most occur on bustling transit lines. One thief snatched a smartphone while sitting behind his unsuspecting victim and darted out the rear of a bus. Another robber grabbed an iPhone from an oblivious bus rider - while she was still talking.

AMSTERDAM - In Hollywood movies, heists usually feature criminals who plan meticulously and use high-tech equipment to avoid detection. But the thieves who snatched seven paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Monet, and others worth millions from a gallery in Rotterdam appear to have taken a less glamorous approach, relying mostly on speed and brute force. In other words, the theft from the Kunsthal exhibition was more "smash and grab" than Ocean's 11. Police said Wednesday they had no suspects in the case, the largest art heist in the country for more than a decade, though an appeal to witnesses had produced more than a dozen tips.

Thanks to a sharp-eyed Episcopal priest, Haddonfield police have arrested and charged a pair of suspected copper thieves. "Don't mess with a priest," the Rev. Patrick Close of Grace Church on Kings Highway posted on his Facebook page Tuesday. Close saw two young men the previous day in an area of the church grounds not open to the public and went out to question them, he reported. They departed, but when he left that night, Close noticed the rectory's copper downspouts were gone.