A crew of burglars disguised as construction workers, who reportedly used wifi-jamming technology, broke into a Studio City home and made off with thousands in jewelry, watches and other valuables, leaving the family distraught and shaken.
According to the homeowner, who did not want to be identified, the burglary happened May 31 sometime after 1 p.m. and before 3:45 p.m. on Dona Dolores Place.
Home surveillance cameras captured one of the suspects dressed as a construction worker and wearing a medical face covering, with homeowner saying the thieves broke into the home through the main bedroom’s sliding glass door.
The homeowner told KTLA’s Mary Beth McDade that she received a call from her security company informing her that her home’s motion sensors were going off. She told them she’d check her cameras and get back to them.
That’s when she said she saw her two sons coming home.
“I was looking at the camera and I saw them running outside,” she explained. “I said, ‘What happened?’ They said that somebody was inside, but nobody was inside. They already were gone.”
The crooks ransacked several rooms, left an enormous mess and got away with tens of thousands of dollars in jewelry, purses and other valuables, some of them irreplaceable, according to the homeowner.
“It’s really hard. It’s not easy what we’re going through,” she said.
Similar to other home burglaries in Southern California, the homeowner said the thieves used wifi-jamming technology to knockout surveillance cameras, even dismantling some of them, as well as the home’s alarm system.
“They took out our alarm system and put it inside the sink and they opened up the water on top of it,” she said. “We had a couple of Ring cameras, and they threw them in the pool.”
The suspects’ cars were apparently captured on surveillance cameras before the break-in, driving back and forth in front of the home for several hours leading up to the burglary.
One of the vehicles is described as a white Nissan Rogue and the other a black Tesla, both with tinted windows.
The homeowner said this is the fourth burglary in the neighborhood in the past few weeks.
“I hope they catch them,” she said. “I know we’re not going to get our belongings back, but I just want justice.”
It’s unclear if any of the break-ins are tied to burglary tourism rings that enter the country on tourist visas with the intent of coming here to commit these types of crimes.