Authorities are looking for a group of car thieves in Wisconsin who broke into a luxury car dealer earlier this month and drove off the lot with nine high-end vehicles. NBC News reports that the incident took place on Feb. 18 at the Jaguar-Land Rover dealership in Waukesha, where the thieves, believed to be teens from a known organized-crime group in the Chicago area, swiped eight cars that belonged to the dealership and one that belonged to an unfortunate customer, per a release from the Waukesha Police Department.
The theft was discovered that morning by a maintenance worker who arrived to find “significant damage to an overhead service garage door,” according to the release. Video on WTMJ shows the suspects running in the dealership’s showroom while wearing masks, with one suspect driving a car right through a garage door. The footage eventually shows a convoy of the stolen vehicles drive away from the dealership. Waukesha Police Capt. Dan Baumann says the suspects were able to steal the cars by hunting down the car fobs inside the dealership, per the AP.
Baumann says the stolen cars have a value of about $583,000. Police say the suspects took them on a high-speed 40-mile chase heading toward the border with Illinois. One suspect, a 17-year-old, has been arrested and now faces four felony charges, including burglary, taking and driving a vehicle without consent, and receiving stolen property worth more than $10,000. He’s being held at the Waukesha County Jail with a $50,000 bond and a hearing set for Monday. Police say six of the nine vehicles have been recovered, including one in a crash that led to the 17-year-old’s arrest. (More Wisconsin stories.)