Three NYPD police officers were charged and sentenced to jail time for abusing their authority and robbing a warehouse in Carlstadt for over $1 million worth of perfumes.
Kelvin Jones, Richard LeBlanca and Brian Checo bursted in the warehouse in Bergen County with their badges out, allegedly inspecting the shipment for counterfeit goods.
There were about a dozen employers working at the time of the raid, all of them suspicious and shocked with the police officers’ behavior. The three cops forced all the employees into a small back office where they were tied up and held for over three hours.
The cops had previously hired 16 day workers and six 24 foot trucks so they could haul away as much designer fragrances as they could, which ended up with more than $1 million missing in stolen goods. After the whole false inspection affair was uncovered, the three of them were arrested and are now serving up to 16 years in prison.
What’s shocking is that Kelvin Jones, the mastermind of the group, has a long history of authority abuse during his police career. Having worked as an undercover operative for the Intelligence Division, Jones had more authority then a regular cop, being allowed to use two aliases and travel across the country on undercover assignments.
Soon he began acting suspiciously, living a lifestyle too flashy for an officer’s salary, and Internal Affairs Bureau started investigating allegations that Jones was protecting drug dealers in exchange for cash and narcotics. Even this wasn’t enough for him so he began plotting the warehouse robbery.
What gave him and his accomplices up was the fact that two of them carelessly used their real names and debut cards when renting out the trucks, a mistake that cost Jones 16 years in prison.