But you still need to activate your account.
Sign in or Subscribe to view this content.
A former Waterville man was indicted Tuesday by a federal grand jury in Bangor on charges that he was part of a multi-million-dollar interstate conspiracy to sell jewelry and gold items allegedly stolen from Arizona.
Arrested Saturday at his residence, Keith Adam Richardson, 28, of Gardiner, Mass., reportedly sold about $3 million worth of the stolen jewelry items out of his now-defunct Waterville stamp and coin shop.
Released on bail, Richardson faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted. He is expected to be arraigned in Bangor.
Richardson, who closed shop several months ago, is believed to have conspired with John Arthur MacLean of Temp, Ariz., known to the FBI as the “Super Thief,” according to court records.
MacLean, who was arrested earlier this month by the FBI and Scottsdale police in Arizona, is known as a “career home-invasion jewelry burglar” who was arrested in Florida in 1979 in connection with a $1 million armed robbery.
Maclean, known under the aliases Chip Bond, Robert Frost, Bob Frost and Jack MacLean, “caused a jewelry theft loss to his victims (in Florida) of multiple millions of dollars,” according to an Arizona affidavit.
James McCarthy, assistant U.S. attorney in Bangor, said Tuesday that the indictment was the result of a coordinated investigation between law-enforcement officials in Maine and Arizona.
McCarthy said that “not much” of the jewelry items had been recovered, “but the recovery process is ongoing.”
Interviewed last weekend by an FBI agent, Richardson reportedly admitted paying MacLean $150,000 to $200,000 “wholesale” for the jewelry shipments, which arrived “almost every other week,” according to the Arizona affidavit.
The Bangor indictment charges the former Waterville man with sending $21,000 in postal money orders to Arizona from January to March 1991.
According to the Arizona affidavit, Scottsdale and Paradise Valley, Ariz., had more than 169 “home invasion” burglaries, in which expensive jewelry and cash were taken from affluent residences, during the past 1 1/2 years. The burglaries appeared to have been done by two people.
Local law-enforcement officials learned that MacLean had been living in Tempe, Ariz., since the burglaries began, stated the document.
“Independent of the Arizona information, the FBI in Maine developed information that large amounts of gold and silver and jewelry were being sold from the Skowhegan Coin and Stamp Corp.” in Waterville, said McCarthy.
In March 1991, surveillance of MacLean was started. The suspect was seen with a girlfriend mailing packages by Federal Express from Phoenix to Waterville.
In April 1991, an opal, diamond and ruby ring valued at $6,000 and stolen during a March 1991 burglary in Scottsdale was purchased at a Gardiner jewelry shop by an FBI agent from Augusta, according to the affidavit.
A Bangor coin dealer, Paul Zebiak, also reported to an FBI agent in August 1991 that he had purchased jewelry items from Richardson for the past two years, paying about $20,000 for items that had a retail value of about $100,000.
Zebiak reported that Richardson had received regular Federal Express shipments from Arizona, “and that those shipments contained gold, silver and jewelry often including up to 200 items per shipment,” according to the court document.
The affidavit states that Zebiak reported to the FBI that from his personal knowledge about Richardson’s sales to other individuals from the Arizona shipments, “the wholesale value would be approximately $500,000 and the retail value approximately 2 1/2 to 3 million dollars.”
Comments
comments for this post are closed