Dubai: Thirteen Asian men were caught red-handed stealing 5,000 laptops worth Dh10 million from an electronics warehouse in Jebel Ali, Dubai Police officials revealed on Wednesday.
Another two Asian men were also caught in conjunction with the thefts.
Maj Gen Khamis Mattar Al Mazeina, Dubai Police Chief, said that they have also linked them to three other warehouse thefts that took place recently in Jebel Ali.
“We have received a number of reports of warehouse thefts in the area recently, and so we stationed patrols in areas that teams at the criminal investigation department indicated were potential targets,” he said.
On Friday, at around 2am-3am, the teams in the area suspected the movements of two pickup trucks, and on checking their number plates found out that they had been reported stolen a few days before.
One of the trucks was driven by one man and there was another man in addition to the driver in the other pickup truck.
Maj Gen Al Mazeina said the teams followed the trucks to a warehouse, were they met 10 people, who had already broken into the facility and started moving out some of its contents and loading the trucks.
“We could have arrested them then, but we wanted them to lead us to where they kept the stolen goods. The teams continued tailing the trucks until they reached a cargo company.”
Each laptop was worth around Dh2,000.
The men were going to ship the stolen goods out the same night and due to the large number of items, they stored some of it in a warehouse.
Maj Gen Khalil Ebrahim Al Mansouri, Assistant to the Dubai Police Chief for Criminal Investigation Affairs, said that team arrested the men at the cargo company and seized all the goods.
“They also arrested the owner of the cargo company, who the suspects confessed was in on the theft. All the stolen goods were returned to the warehouse owner, who had filed a theft report. He could not believe he had got his goods back,” he said.
Investigations revealed that the man who reported the two trucks missing was also in on the theft, and he willingly gave them the two trucks.
“But he reported the pickups missing to protect himself if they were caught, but he was found out. We handed over the stolen vehicles to the concerned authorities and transferred the case and the seized products to the public prosecution.” Maj Gen Al Mansouri said.
The men also confessed to committing the other warehouse thefts.
Maj Gen Al Mansouri said it is unfortunate that warehouse owners do not invest in their security.
“For example this warehouse had no cameras, no guard and was locked with a simple lock that the thieves were able to break using simple tools. The goods that were stolen were only a very small portion of what the warehouse actually contained, and installing some security measures is the least one can do to ensure the safety of their products’ safety. ”
