Metro has all the goods on pawnshop items

Tuesday, Jan. 12, 1999 | 10:36 a.m.

Victims of a series of thefts came to Las Vegas a couple of months ago to attend a bankruptcy hearing for a small freight company they believed had pilfered items from boxes en route to them.

While strolling through a local pawnshop, one of the victims spotted a painting that was part of the missing cargo. Another found a 100-year-old glass work that was part of his missing items.

Because of the paperwork that the 25 area pawnshops and 40 to 50 second-hand buy-and-sell stores submit to Metro Police on a weekly basis, it did not take detectives long to follow the paper trail. Six people were indicted on alleged thefts totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Metro Police say a small percentage of items that are pawned or sold to local businesses have been stolen.

But if a theft victim does find a stolen item on the sales floor of a pawnshop or second-hand store, meticulous record-keeping makes it easy to identify the item as stolen and solve the case.

And with new computerized equipment at Metro's pawnshop detail, it will be even harder for thieves to hoodwink local businessmen.

In recent months, Metro's pawn detail has used a state-of-the-art computer software package from Staminet that one day may become the model for agencies nationwide.

"We've had officials from Dallas and Honolulu police in to look at our system," Irvine said. "It practically does our work for us. The problem with past systems was that they did not have enough memory to hold all of our data. This system does."

The system flags not only serial numbers of pawned or sold items that match those in crime reports, but it also allows police to check on known felons to see if they recently have sold anything to area pawnshops or second-hand stores.

All of the pawnshops in Metro's jurisdiction keep their pawn and sales transactions on computer disks that are turned over to Metro's pawn detail weekly. Second-hand stores record their sales transactions on paper, which also are turned over to Metro on a regular basis.

"In the 14 years I've been with this department, almost none of it (stolen merchandise) gets to the sales floor," said Coleen Irvine, a supervisor with Metro's pawn detail.

"If an item is bought by a second-hand store or pawnshop, it has to be held for 30 days before it can be sold. If an item is pawned, it has to be held 120 days. That is plenty of time for us to check out serial numbers and descriptions of the items before they get to the floor. But, like with anything else, sometimes things get by."

Metro's pawnshop detail comprises eight civilian workers: one full-time supervisor, five full-time law enforcement technicians and two part-time clerks.

The unit works 24 hours, seven days.

The detail conducts checks of computer records on merchandise pawned or sold to help property crimes division police locate stolen goods. It also handles gun registration, including background checks on the weapons.

Still, even with all the new technology available, Metro larceny detective Jon Morris said victims have to do their part to help police.

"When a theft occurs, a victim should fill out a crime report with details like serial numbers, identifying markings and a good description," he said. "The reports go through the pawn detail computer, and we get hits (leads) that we can check out."

Morris said that in such cases, he contacts the victims and meets them at the pawnshop to determine if the pawned items are theirs. If they are, a police hold is placed on the items while police obtain a search warrant -- a state law was passed two years ago requiring that process -- and the victim eventually gets the items back.

Morris said that if the victims of the freight thefts filed police reports in addition to insurance claims, their stuff could have been recovered before it was put up for sale at area businesses.

"I can recall only one case where a person didn't get her stuff back, and that was because of an error by the pawnshop," Morris said, recalling a time when a set of tools that were on police hold accidentally were placed on the sales floor and sold.

"In that case, the pawnshop offered the woman her choice of either money for the value of the tools or similar merchandise."

And statistics show that pawnshop and second-hand store operators apparently are careful with whom they deal.

"Between July of 1997 and this past June, 689,491 items were pawned or sold in Metro's jurisdiction, and we had to check out less than 5 percent of those transactions," said Metro Lt. Tom Lozich, who is in charge of burglary and larceny detectives and the pawnshop detail. "I'd say less than 1 percent resulted in prosecutions."

The figure for stolen merchandise is actually far less than that, said Pioneer Loan & Jewelry owner Bill Drobkin, husband and business partner of Erminia Drobkin, the vice president of the Collateral Loan Association of Nevada.

"If you crunch Metro's numbers, just 0.002 percent of what goes through pawnshops is found to be stolen," said Drobkin, whose family has run the 64-year-old downtown pawnshop since 1989.

"People have this image of pawnshops, and it's all wrong. We provide loans and work closely with Metro's pawn detail. This is a clean industry and we are proud of it."

It just takes common sense to steer clear of trouble, said Richard Harrison, owner of the family-operated Gold & Silver Pawn for the last 17 years.

"A guy brought in three computers the other day, and he had sales receipts that showed they were to be delivered three days later," Harrison said. "He probably worked on a loading dock, took them and was trying to sell them. We want no part of that kind of business. I told him to take them elsewhere."

Added his son, Rick Harrison, a manager in the shop: "It's pretty stupid to go to a pawnshop to try to sell stolen merchandise. I take information from their ID and tell them the transaction is going to go through Metro. There is definitely a paper trail."

Lozich said professional burglars generally go through fences to get money for their items because they know that what goes into a pawnshop can be traced to them. However, once in a while, some crooks take that chance.

"The key thing here is that pawnshop and second-hand store operators unknowingly get stolen merchandise," he said. "In cases that are prosecuted, pawnshop operators can file for restitution (from the thieves) as part of the plea-bargain agreement."

In one of his bigger busts, Morris said a thief who sold items to several local pawnshops was given five years in prison. Many such suspects plea bargain in hopes of getting shorter sentences, he said, because the evidence through the pawnshop paperwork often is too strong to overcome in a court battle.

"After a burglary, people feel so helpless," Irvine said. "We have gotten many letters and calls from grateful people after their stuff has been recovered. Many of them tell us they never thought they would see their stolen property again."