SAN JOSE — Since at least 2020, police in the Bay Area have been attempting to stop a brazen Southern California heist crew that has made millions from dozens of nighttime burglaries and highway robberies, targeting shipments of tech industry hardware.
They broke into warehouses, distribution centers, cross-dock facilities, and even loaded trailer trucks that were robbed blind while the driver stopped at a red light. Over the last five years, authorities say this group has been linked to $22 million worth of theft, including a single instance last December in Burlingame, where a shipment of $7.04 million in Nvidia computer chips was stolen from a warehouse, just one day before it was to be delivered to Supermicro facility in San Jose.
Now, six suspected members of the heist crew have landed in federal court, facing charges related to two recent thefts, which authorities say fits the modus operandi of the heist crew. They have been identified as Johnathan Alexander Chamorro, Galo Horacio Chamorro, Jennifer Prado-Flores, Joao Jose Chamorro, Cheney Libanez Bravo, Cristian Mendoza-Valencia.
All six have been charged with conspiracy to commit two thefts: an attempted heist from a trailer truck that was parked outside of a car dealership in Fremont last Aug. 4, and the Oct. 8 theft of $100,000 worth of Apple watches from Ashtabula County, Ohio.
Authorities say Johnathan Chamorro and Joao Chamorro are brothers, and that another of their siblings is a suspected serial cargo thief living in Los Angeles County. The three brothers’ homes were raided in 2022, along with Galo Chamorro’s residence, where authorities seized a pneumatic jack that was believed to be involved in burglaries, multiple firearms, walkie-talkies, radio signal jammers, and $618,158.66 in suspected stolen merchandise from an unmarked box truck, according to court records.
The raids were part of a massive investigation into dozens of thefts targeting tech shipments in Alameda, Santa Clara, Sonoma, Tulare, and San Mateo counties. These included a 2024 burglary involving seven to 10 suspects and a loss of more than $383,000, as well as a September 2024 heist where thieves broke into a FedEx truck when it stopped at a red light and made off with $233,422 in merchandise, authorities said.
Along the way, the thieves allegedly used fraudulently registered cars, switched or removed license plates, and conducted counter surveillance. In the Aug. 4 heist, one of the suspect vehicles was linked to a similar April incident, where robbers shoved a truck delivery driver and stole $190,000 worth of merchandise from his trailer, authorities said.
The same crew is believed to be responsible for the June 3 theft of $187,000 worth of Nvidia computer chips in Fremont, an incident where police arrested five suspects, whose names haven’t been publicly identified. In May, Fremont police and CHP officers reportedly formed a convoy around an Omni Logistics shipment headed to San Jose after noticing the truck was being tailed by a suspicious vehicle authorities had previously been surveilling as part of the investigation. They say they when the suspects noticed the police presence, they fled.
The thefts are part of a trend in the Bay Area that began when the burgeoning tech industry first gained a foothold in Silicon Valley. Computer chips and other hardware is small, light, yet highly valuable, so much so that a single theft can rake in millions.
But the thieves aren’t always so brazen. While this crew was under investigation, the CHP began investigating an unrelated $5.9 million theft involving Hewlett Packard products. In that instance, a fake buyer placed a multi-million dollar shipment with the company and a trucker showed up to a company facility in Olive Branch, Mississippi, ostensibly to ship it to Illinois, authorities said.
But after that day, the truck simply disappeared. Some of the stolen products later turned up in online marketplace sales in Alameda and Santa Clara counties, authorities said.
