A man wanted on felony charges in Florida was arrested this afternoon in Oak Park when Cook County Sheriff's officers pretended to be rug cleaners and he let them into his apartment.Officials in Orange County, Fla. say Omilquer Garcia Perez, 37, was the leader of an operation involved in credit-card fraud, vehicle theft and gasoline theft, and that he was hiding out with relatives in the Chicago area.
Sheriff's police found an apartment in the 900 block of West North Boulevard in Oak Park where he was staying, and just after noon, they moved in, a spokesman said.
"Our officers knocked on the door and told him they were here to clean his carpet," said Steve Patterson, a spokesman for the sheriff. "He opened the door and was taken into custody."
Orange County authorities had issued a warrant for Perez's arrest that charged him with racketeering, possession of credit card-making material, trafficking in stolen credit cards, title fraud and auto theft.
Patterson said the Orange County Sheriff's Office contacted his department this morning about Perez. Officers from the Central Warrants Unit, going off information that he has relatives in the area, determined that he was at the apartment building in Oak Park.
They went there and saw Perez coming and going; soon they determined which apartment he was staying in, Patterson said.
The officers noticed that there was a carpet-cleaning crew in the building working in another apartment and decided to go to Perez's door posing as cleaners. They knocked and he personally opened the door.
Perez was arrested without incident further incident.
"For being the alleged head of a pretty sophisticated criminal enterprise," Patterson said, "he wasn't very smart this time."
According to the Orlando Sentinel, Florida officials say Perez ran A&A Trucking, a shell company in southeast Orange County.
On Monday, investigators said that a dozen people they believe are associates of Perez had been arrested last week.
The group made an estimated daily profit of $10,000 by installing skimmers on gas pumps throughout Central Florida and in Pinellas, Hillsborough and Miami-Dade counties, the Orange County Sheriff's Office said.
After stealing customers' numbers, they embossed them on gift cards and used them to buy diesel fuel. Other members of the group stole trucks that were fitted with large tanks in which to store hundreds of gallons of fuel, investigators said.
Truckers bought the fraudulent gift cards for $40 apiece and used them to buy diesel fuel, which was resold to other truckers at about half the legitimate market price, the Sheriff's Office said.