Clark County Sheriff’s Office Adds More Cars, Suspects to Pacific Coast Car Theft Ring

On October 2, 2024By Rgal Nv

SALEM Oregon (KPTV) – New details continue to emerge regarding a massive car theft ring that stretched from California to Washington over the past year.

Professional thieves used sophisticated technology, including high-tech devices and armed assaults, to steal more than 20 muscle cars in total and make hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process.

Salem BMW General Manager Jon Taylor was among those whose dealership was burglarized. In this case, a Dodge Hellcat, without the attackers ever taking the keys to open the vehicle.

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“These new model General Motor cars aren’t known for that, so we were definitely caught off guard, especially a Corvette, they’re hard to steal.”

“All of this has happened to me before, but never a car that you still have all the keys to,” Taylor said. “I don’t have a wine tag on the car, I need to replace the windshield, I’m going to have to spend thousands of dollars to fix it and when I sell it I’ll have to disclose that it’s ‘a theft.’

Fox 12 spoke with several victims involved in this ring and we know Taylor is far from alone. We also learned through this investigation that the car theft ringleader, Aric Adams Jr. of Central Point, had a lot of help traveling the Pacific Coast to surveil and steal these expensive vehicles.

During this four month investigation led by the Clark County Sheriff’s Office with assistance from Multnomah and Washington County, detectives were able to link five suspects, Christopher Bensch, Miguel Gonzalez, Luke Tangocci, Tyler Lautenslager and a minor, on several charges such as possession of a stolen vehicle, dealing in stolen property and illegal possession of a firearm, among other serious arrestable offenses.

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Police are investigating after gunfire damaged at least seven cars in Northwest Portland early Saturday, according to PPB.

“A car leads to another car, leads to a person, leads to another person,” CCSO Detective Chris Skidmore said. “They’re looking for those kinds of things, we have detectives, that’s the kind of thing, high-end robberies, robberies and they’re going to find those kinds of people.”

During this expanding operation, the Tactical Detective Unit (TDU) recovered 11 cars totaling $700,000, as well as $42,000 in cash and nine firearms. All law enforcement stakeholders and car dealers hope that these criminals will be stopped for good as they fight this new era of car theft.

“If you don’t have video, understand this, we use robots to patrol our land, and that seems to help get back to basics, to common sense,” Taylor said.