In a town already known for meteoric rises in status and fortune, a group of Los Angeles teenagers are alleged to have found a fast way to enjoy the glitz and glamour of the stars — by burgling their houses.
Los Angeles police say four teenage girls and a boy pored over fashion magazines, Web sites and gossip TV shows and selected jewelry and clothing they wanted, then determined where the targeted starlets lived, cased their houses, and struck, in some cases more than once at the same house.
The crude burglaries, which police say netted millions of dollars, were captured on surveillance cameras, and detectives have linked the teens to break-ins at the Hollywood homes of Lindsey Lohan, Paris Hilton, Orlando Bloom, reality TV star Audrina Patridge, and others, US news media reported. In some instances the victims remained unaware their homes had been burgled.
“This is a no-brains caper. There’s not a lot of self-awareness,” Los Angeles detective Brett Goodkin told the Los Angeles Times. “They saw it, they wanted it, they took it and continued taking it.”
The suspects, who include a girl who was hoping to star in a reality TV show of her own, have earned instant notoriety in a culture in which the bar for media stardom seems to drop weekly.
In a twist seemingly written by a jobbing Hollywood screenwriter, the suspects now find themselves featured alongside the celebrities they are accused of stealing from on TMZ.com, a celebrity news Web site that has followed the case since the thefts were first reported.
Police say that the group’s ringleader was 19-year-old Rachel Lee, arrested on Friday in Las Vegas. Lee, Diana Tamayo, 19, Courtney Ames, 18, Nicholas Prugo, 18, and Alexis Neiers, 18, are accused of a stealing spree that began last October and ran until last month. Prugo was the first arrested, after turning up alongside others in surveillance footage. He was accused of stealing US$170,000 in jewelry and clothing from the homes of Lohan and Patridge.
The girls were classmates at Indian Hills High School, a school for troubled teens. The suspects were allegedly aided by 27-year-old bartender Roy Lopez, accused of fencing the stolen goods.
Goodkin said the suspects focused on one star at a time, tracking their movements using ubiquitous celebrity photograph and media sites on the Internet and learning when they were scheduled to be out of town.
A lawyer for some of the victims has said Los Angeles paparazzi photographers are at fault for prying into stars’ private lives, revealing details about their houses and encouraging the theft.
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