In May, police called it one of the most expansive theft cases in recent years. Now, a Howard County investigation into thousands of stolen construction tools is at the finish line.
“This was probably one of the most time-intensive and painstaking investigations that we’ve done here,” Seth Hoffman, a spokesperson for the department, told WMAR Thursday.
The inquiry, which involved thousands of hours of police work, turned up about 18,000 total tools, valued at roughly $5-6 million altogether.
According to police, though there are assuredly more victims who did not report a theft, 155 total people said their tools had been stolen; the value of tools belonging to those victims were worth about $290,000.
“Our detectives had to go through and identify each one, index each one,” Hoffman described.
One man, 52-year-old Jose Aceves of Jessup, was indicted in Howard County on a theft scheme charge.
“We believe this person was kind of the ring leader,” Hoffman explained. “The person in charge, the person who is associated most with it. During the course of the investigation, there were numerous other people who may have been involved – but our detectives focused in on this one person who was associated with some of the storage units in which these tools were found.”