Three La Jolla Country Day School students were charged Tuesday, Feb. 6, in connection with a series of burglaries over a three-year time span during which they stole $205,000 worth of computer equipment from the school.
Two 17-year-olds and an 18-year-old from La Jolla were expelled from Country Day School and could face up to six years in prison if charged as adults, according to Keith Burt, San Diego County deputy district attorney and Computer and Technology Crimes High Tech Response Team (CATCH) director.
“Anybody who commits a first offense that is commercial burglary is not likely to go to prison at the outset, but on the other hand, given the magnitude of this situation, custody seems warranted,” Burt said by phone Tuesday.
The 18-year-old suspect, a Korean citizen in the U.S. on a student visa, has returned to his native country according to his lawyer, Burt said. If the man’s visa is revoked, the district attorney’s office may have to issue a warrant to bring him back into the country, he said.
If tried as juveniles, the suspects could face a broad range of sentencing, including time in detention homes or in youth authority, which is similar to a juvenile prison, according to the deputy district attorney.
La Jolla Country Day Head of School Judith Glickman held a media advisory conference Tuesday to discuss the announcement of charges against the former students.
“I want to say how grateful we are to the district attorney’s office, to the police force and to the CATCH team,” Glickman said by phone Tuesday. “They just did an amazing job completing this investigation. I feel it’s just another indication of how strong we are as a community ” we are more than just a school, we are truly a community. We want to be certain that we emphasize character and social development with young people and are working together with parents to assure that we can continue making big advances in this area.”
Six separate burglaries on the school’s campus between January 2004 and October 2006 resulted in dozens of missing Macintosh G-5 desktop computers, Sony VAIO, Hewlett-Packard, Compaq and Dell laptop computers and related equipment, according to a statement released by the district attorney’s office.
In December 2006, a detective from the San Diego Police Department’s Northern Division turned the case over to the district attorney’s CATCH team, which tracked a stolen laptop that was equipped with remote-tracking software to an eBay customer. The customer then identified a La Jolla Country Day senior as the seller, according to Burt.
“That kind of follow-up research and investigating that you need to do in these kinds of cases is the kind of stuff people at CATCH do on a daily basis,” he said. “This is just a perfect example of how these things work and why it’s important to have participation from all the agencies.”
The CATCH team then instituted an undercover operation in which an officer arranged to buy a computer from one of the suspects. On Dec. 16, investigators made the purchase of the stolen laptop and served a search warrant on the teen’s La Jolla home and a rented storage unit in Sorrento Valley.
More than 50 computers were recovered from the storage unit as well as cash, a counterfeit California driver’s license used to buy medical marijuana, scales for weighing marijuana, ski masks and a pry bar.
Several laptops were retrieved from under one suspect’s bed, where he was charging them, according to the district attorney’s office.
The district attorney’s office could not release information regarding when the minors will appear in court, according to Burt.