Posted on 03/02/2023 1:04:30 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
GOLDEN GATES ESTATES, Fla. — A Naples man attempted to take off with a hefty payload after stealing a heavy equipment truck in Golden Gates Estates.
According to the Collier County Sheriff’s Office (CCSO), a Caterpillar front loader was stolen from a property on the 5800 block of Everglades Boulevard North on Sunday.
At around 7 a.m. on Sunday, deputies spotted Lazaro Urquiaga Perez driving a truck pulling the front loader on a flatbed trailer.
Urquiaga Perez was arrested after deputies matched the front loader with the one stolen earlier in the day. The company from which the front loader was stolen from said it was worth $60,000.
According to the CCSO report, Urquiaga Perez told deputies a man asked him if he would pick up and move a piece of equipment to Miami for $800. Urquiaga Perez told the man he would get the front loader Sunday morning.
Urquiaga Perez said he was told to text when he arrived in Miami so someone could meet him and lead him to the drop-off location, according to the CCSO report.
The madness doesn’t end there; investigators found methamphetamine, a firearm, a GPS scanner, and a box containing multiple heavy equipment keys inside of the truck.
Dirt bag
Yeah, we knew it would be another stinkin’ messycan.
Simple today to protect these big tools. Air Tags. Hide them on everything.
I sat on a jury during the trial of a similar case over a stole bobcat style CAT machine. They caught the thief because the seat switch failed and it wouldn’t start. He called the CAT dealer and the repair man checked the unit computer for fault codes. The serial number showed up along with the owner’s info not a the thief’s info. The serial number on the machine had been obliterated. Cops were called, arrests were made, convictions followed. The thief worked the machine for several months, then the shtf.
Must be quite old - a new one is at least $120K, and dealers give very good trade-in money on usable ones.
In the 70’s tractors and combines would be stolen in the night, covered with hay bales to look like a big hay stack. After the heat was off, they would uncover it at night and haul it out of the country to another state.a
Some local yutes also stole the local police car and hid it in a hay pile. Gone for two weeks. (somebody talked)
I love that they are showing ads for front end loaders.
Maybe he wanted a really low rider?
He should have camouflaged it as a large Pink Vagina.
“The Somebody Else’s Problem field... relies on people’s natural predisposition not to see anything they don’t want to, weren’t expecting, or can’t explain. If Effrafax had painted the mountain pink and erected a cheap and simple Somebody Else’s Problem field on it, then people would have walked past the mountain, round it, even over it, and simply never have noticed that the thing was there.” - Hitchhiker’s guide
uBlock Origin can fix that.
If the thief has an iPhone he can search for an Air Tag. Probably won't be long before they all check for them.
I was working in Gillete wyoming on a apartment complex.
I was driving to work and i kept seeing cars with one side crushed.
A guy came out of a bar after closing time to see a D9 dozer sitting there on a project.
The guy ran that Cat but was fired from the job.
Dude had a Cat key in his pocket.
The guy jumps into it and startes cruising the streets of Gillette, tearing shit up, running over cars.
Next to the place where i was working the guy bails on the Cat while its still in motion.
The cat falls into the basement of a building but its grinding its way out.
Cop jumps up on it and shuts it down
Questions, class ?
60K for a Cat front end loader? Gotta be nearing an antique or all worn out.
I was in the local Cat dealer a couple weeks ago looking at sub-compact tractors (aka garden tractor size with loader and cab) and they are around 50K.
First off, kudos to the Sherriff’s Deputies who spotted it. Let’s be honest, unless it’s that one company in S. Florida that paints all its equipment hot pink, one front-end loader pretty much looks like every other one.
Second, what kind of bozo brings meth along for an equipment heist? This bozo, apparently...
Turns out that it is a handheld gadget that seems to have the primary use of searching for and finding GPS transmitters attached to equipment and vehicles for protecting against theft or tracking commercial vehicles in transit.
It doesn’t help that these big machines still use universal keys. One key fits all. If I buy a $150K machine I want my own key that isn’t universal to every other machine. It’s ridiculous that it’s still like this in 2023.
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