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Kevin Jackson, 57, of Rahway, NJ, must serve a little over two years before he'll be eligible for release because there's no parole in the federal prison system.
Jackson was part of a second-story crew that the FBI said worked from a hit list of dozens of homes in the four states based on “stereotype and opportunity" from Dec. 2, 2016, to March 20, 2019.
One of Jackson's associates told detectives that Asians were targeted “because it was believed that the victims kept large sums of currency and jewelry in their residences,” according to a complaint filed by the bureau in U.S. District Court in Newark.
Notes found in the defendants’ cars had the home addresses of individuals of Asian descent, along with derogatory terms used to describe their ethnicity, the complaint says.
Crew members got those addresses by breaking into the victims’ vehicles at their places of business, it says. In some cases, they placed makeshift GPS devices on the vehicles, investigators said.
The burglars often made their way into the homes through unsecured second-floor windows before seeking out cash, jewelry and guns, according to the FBI.
In one instance in 2019, $500,000 in cash was taken from a single home in Eatontown, the bureau said.
Local, state and federal law enforcement authorities teamed up to smash the ring after local police interrupted several burglaries in progress, U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Philip R. Sellinger said.
A major investigation involving dozens of law enforcement agencies was headed by the FBI Newark’s Transnational Organized Crime Task Force, he said.Tens of thousands of dollars in stolen United States currency and currency from Asian countries, jewelry, family heirlooms, and other valuables were recovered in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the U.S. attorney said.
Several people, including Jackson, were arrested.
One of them, Randi Barr of Vauxhall, NJ, was sentenced in August of last year to four years and two months in federal prison in exchange for his guilty plea to conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property. He must serve just about all of the 50-month sentence.
Jackson took a plea deal from the government, as well, rather than risk the potential outcome of a trial. He pleaded guilty last October to conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property.
In addition to the prison term, U.S. District Judge Evelyn Padin sentenced Jackson in Newark on May 14 to three years of supervised release and ordered him to pay restitution of $294,586 under the terms of the agreement secured by Assistant U.S. Attorney Dong Joo Lee of Sellinger's Cybercrime Unit in Newark. ******
Working with the FBI task force were a host of agencies, including the New Jersey State Police, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police, the NYPD, the Middlesex and Union county prosecutor's offices, Delaware State Police-Troop 2 and the Essex County Sheriff’s Office, Sellinger said.
Key to the takedown, he said, were police in dozens of towns: Bernards Township, Bethlehem Township, Cherry Hill, Cinnaminson, Clark, Cranford, Delran, Edison, East Brunswick, East Hanover, Eatontown, Elizabeth, Evesham Township, Exeter Township, Fair Lawn, Fort Lee, Franklin Township, Glassboro, Gloucester Township, Hackensack, Old Bridge, South Plainfield, Sayreville, Hazlet, Highland Park, Hillside, Hillsborough Township, Howell Township, Jackson, Kenilworth, Lawrence Township, Linden, Lyndhurst, Mahwah, Marlboro Township, Maywood, Middletown, Montville, Morris Township, Mount Laurel, Mountainside, New Providence, North Brunswick, North Plainfield, Ocean Township, Wall Township, Union Township, Old Bridge, Paramus, Parsippany, Phillipsburg, Piscataway, Raritan, Roselle Park, Somerville, South Brunswick, Tinton Falls, Toms River, Warren, Washington Township, Watchung, Westfield, Woodbridge, South River and Spotswood in New Jersey.
Also playing important roles were police from Forks Township, Whitehall Township, South Whitehall Township, Upper Macungie Township, New Castle County, Pocono Township and the Pocono Mountain Regional Police in PA, Haverstraw in Rockland County, NY, Town of Tuxedo in Orange County, NY, and New Castle County in Delaware, Selinger said.
Several federal agencies also participated, the U.S. attorney noted. Among them, he said, were the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Department of State, the Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the U.S. Department of Transportation and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
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