Silver Addict wrote:Victim was the perp's father.
Rare coins, other valuables recovered after Christmas theft from Corbett home
Published: Thursday, January 05, 2012, 10:13 PM Updated: Friday, January 06, 2012, 6:04 AM
A ring of Christmas thieves probably thought they had pulled off an lucrative heist when they broke into a shed in Corbett and made off with tools and two safes brimming with jewels, silver bricks and valuable coins.
They didn't count on a dogged detective, a determined victim, a helpful pawnshop database and a banker who knows coins.
On Thursday, Dan Johnson Sr., and assorted relatives and friends sat at tables in a Multnomah County Sheriff's Office auditorium in East Portland, sifting through more than 600 pounds of coins recovered from a Safeway CoinStar machine, trying to recreate a collection handed down from Johnson's father-in-law.
Meanwhile, deputies were searching for the 27-year-old suspected mastermind of the $50,000 theft: Dan Johnson Jr., the victim's son.
The younger Johnson is believed to be couch surfing somewhere in East County, said Detective Ken Yohe.
Yohe believes Johnson Jr. planned the break-in with two other men, hoping to steal tools. But he was surprised to find the safes, which he left to his cohorts, Yohe said.
View full sizeMultnomah County Sheriff
Dan Johnson Jr. is being sought be Multnomah County Sheriff's detectives in connection with a burglary at his father's home.
Before discovering the thefts on Christmas afternoon, Johnson Sr., 54, called to invite his namesake son to join the family for Christmas supper. When relatives discovered the outbuildings had been burgled, Dan Jr. feigned surprise, police said, and pointed the finger at a man police now believe was one of his partners.
Yohe ran the names of that suspect's known associates through RAPID, a pawnshop database. The man's girlfriend, who did not have a criminal record, showed up twice after pawning a long list of items that Johnson Sr.'s wife recognized as stolen.
When deputies showed up at the apartment the couple shared, they found a sack filled with four silver bricks, 1,400 silver half dollars and hundreds of silver dollars -- in the dryer – along with more evidence, Yohe said.
Faced with first-degree aggravated theft charges, the pair, who police aren't yet naming, agreed to cooperate and revealed a plot that sounds like the stuff of Hollywood crime comedy:
First, the man described opening the two 1.2-cubic foot safes and finding the unexpected bounty inside: Silver coins and silver bricks worth more than $20,000, jewelry worth $25,000 and roughly $7,000 in other coins and currency.
After unwrapping thousands of rolled of coins, the suspect said he and his cohorts took more than 50 pounds of them to a nearby Safeway store.
View full sizeRandy L. Rasmussen/The Oregonian
Among the old coins found by authorities after the burglary at the Johnson home in Corbertt were these rare nickels and pennies. One of the men involved in the theft later told detectives that many of the coins were run through a CoinStar machine; others were exchanged at a bank.
Not understanding the value of the coins, they ran them through a CoinStar machine, which spit out a voucher for $450. It also spit out all the silver coins – which the suspect then traded for bills at a Bank of America branch. That's when a bank employee picked up on the fact that the coins were old and silver and set them aside, which made it easy for police to later recover them.
Then, mistaking the diamonds and emeralds they found as fakes, they tossed them in a Dumpster. The rest went to pawn shops in Portland and Gresham.
Finally, the crooks burned savings bonds in the safe because they were in the victim's name.
"A lot of times in property cases, you're not going to recover property," said Yohe. "This time, we're finding stuff."
Fingers blackened by dirty coins, Yohe watched Dan Johnson Sr. and his close friends and relatives plow through shoeboxes of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters Thursday afternoon. They were searching for 1921 Indian cents, Mercury dimes, Buffalo nickels and Peace dollar coins.
One uncirculated nickel was worth about $3. A 1889 U.S. Morgan silver dollar with an "O" mint marking and little wear, could fetch nearly $50 from a collector. "Some were worth a couple hundred dollars apiece," said Johnson Sr.
"This was for the grandchildren," he said, turning over pennies to study the dates
Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2012 4:16 pm
