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It was in the mid-1990s that David Kirkland hooked up with Teaneck High School buddy Terence Lawton, who owned a detailing shop in Englewood where he created a car that gave the founding burglary crew its nickname.
Pricey homes in Paramus, Englewood Cliffs and elsewhere yielded the gang an average of $30,000 in cash and valuables during what investigators said were nearly 500 break-ins. The total haul was estimated in the tens of millions of dollars.
Morris, Middlesex and Monmouth counties offered targets, as well, as did Rockland and Westchester. Victims included then-Westchester District Attorney Jeanine Piro.
A lookout not only watched the neighborhood: He monitored police scanner frequencies and kept in contact with the others via cellphones cloned with stolen numbers.
Members of the Englewood/Teaneck-based crew kicked, shouldered or butted in front doors and ripped out burglar alarms. While one of them made a beeline for the master bedroom, another opened a back door for a quick exit.
Most times they were in, out and gone within 90 seconds -- barely enough time for alarm companies to alert police.
Responding officers usually found alarm speakers on the floor or dangling from ceiling vents. Small safes were removed, then later smashed open, cleaned out and dumped on the side of the road or in the Hudson River.
Emerson police were chasing several original crew members piled into a BMW one night when the rear license plate suddenly flipped down and a quartet of halogen lights blinded them. The burglars sped off.
Crew members stashed the goods in a sliding drawer under the dashboard that could be opened only by pressing a series of console buttons. The BMW also had an exhaust pipe that spewed oil, presumably to make police cars skid out.
From that car came a nickname that stuck.
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THE JAMES BOND GANG: These videos tell the story.
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Original Bond Gang members kept a lawyer on retainer and had their own exclusive jewelry salesman to fence the stolen goods in Manhattan’s midtown Diamond District.
The booty sold for 20 cents on the dollar, according to a Diamond District dealer who turned snitch for the government. The dealer said he often reset some of the jewelry so his clients could give their wives and girlfriends presents.
Police were confounded at first. Different towns meant different jurisdictions.
During a meeting with the FBI to discuss preparations for the 1994 World Cup at Giants Stadium, several detectives from the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office expressed anger at their inability to make a case big enough to produce hard time.
“These guys would get pinched one at a time, and be right back on the street, flaunting the fruits of their labor,” a senior FBI agent told Daily Voice at the time.
That agent, Ed Petersen, came up with the winning gambit.
Since the group transported its booty across state lines, Petersen said, why not pursue federal convictions under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations statute (better known as RICO)?
Before long, detectives from throughout Bergen County were gathering and comparing intelligence on break-ins in their towns, while the feds built a case that would put the James Bond Gang out of business — at least temporarily.
They had little trouble rounding up crew members, except Lawton. So they tricked him: Police called Lawton on his cellphone and told him his Englewood detailing business had been burglarized.
Uniformed officers were waiting when Lawton pulled in. Instead of filing a report, they handcuffed him.
Lawton, Kirkland and others who did their time in the original heists were soon back at it, only to be re-arrested.
The longest-tenured member of the spin-off Bond gangs, 33-year-old ex-con Marc Rainey of Hackensack is among six accused burglars arrested recently by the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office and charged with nearly three dozen break-ins that produced over $450,000 in cash and jewelry.
Like their namesakes, the wannabe Bond members “targeted residential homes in affluent areas, often on or near dead end or cul-de-sac streets” in Bergen County, Essex, Union, Somerset, Middlesex, and Monmouth counties, Bergen County Prosecutor Mark Musella said.
“The burglaries occurred during the early evening hours, when the homes were not well lit and it appeared that the homeowners were not present,” he said Friday.
The burglars covered Ring camera lenses, forced their way in and ransacked master bedrooms for safes, jewelry and cash, the prosecutor said.
Members of the wanna-be Bond crew were nowhere near as clever as the genuine article, detectives said.
Last month, a joint investigation involving a host of local, county and state law enforcement agencies coordinated by Musella’s Special Investigation Squad produced court-warranted searches on homes and vehicles in Hackensack, Elmwood Park and East Orange.
Arrested were:
- Rainey, who previously served nearly five years in state prison on burglary-related convictions, including the theft of 600-pound safe from Connecticut;
- Fellow ex-con Lawal Erskin, 36, of East Orange, who served four months in state prison in 2017 for his role in a spin-off group of Bond-style burglars;
- Jihaad Holmes, 25, also of East Orange;
- Elizabeth residents Rashad Black, 33, and Tyrone Jenkins, who turns 26 this coming Tuesday.
The sixth defendant, Javon Barlow, 33, of Hackensack, had been free after 18 months in state prison when he was sent back in February for burglary-related convictions.
He’s serving his current sentence at the Southern State Correctional Facility in Delmont (Cumberland County) and isn’t eligible for parole until January of next year.
Various charges brought in the case include not only burglary but conspiracy, promotion of organized street crime, money laundering and possession of drugs that included cocaine, heroin, pot and promethazine.
Holmes also was charged with having an illegal gun and ammo.
Holmes, Rainey and Erskine remained held in the Bergen County Jail pending detention hearings.
Jenkins remained held in the Somerset County Jail, and Black in the Middlesex County Jail, pending first appearances in Central Judicial Processing Court.
Musella thanked several law enforcement agencies for their participation in the investigation and roundup:
- Essex and Somerset County prosecutor’s office;
- Bergen and Essex county sheriff’s offices;
- Hackensack, Tenafly, Englewood Cliffs, Saddle River, Berkeley Heights and Edison police departments;
- New Jersey State Parole.
CLICK HERE: History Of The James Bong Gang
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