Multi-State Police Effort Cracks Equipment Theft Ring

New Jersey and Philadelphia State Police, along with the Winslow Township Police Department and detectives from Braddock, New Jersey, joined forces to apprehend an interstate landscaping equipment theft ring.

Local police were investigating a fraudulent check purchase of a tractor bought in Winslow when they heard of a similar scam in another township involving a $7,000 Bobcat zero-turn mower. They contacted state police, who learned that the tractor and mower were both ordered by the same landscape company.

A coordinated effort by Bridgeton, New Jersey detectives, the state police auto and electronic surveillance units, and Winslow and Philadelphia police led investigators to a northeast Philadelphia location, where the mower was to be delivered. Two suspects received the mower, paid for it with a fake check, loaded it onto a tractor trailer and then delivered it to a construction company in Philadelphia, police said.

Investigators recovered a total of $137,000 worth of farm and landscaping equipment fraudulently purchased from locations in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Two farm tractors and a zero-turn mower, valued at a total of $62,000, were later recovered in Pennsylvania.