By Mike Martinez, STAFF WRITER
TRACY — Tracy Police identified three men accused of burglarizing homes in Tracy, Mountain House and

Modesto while posing as movers, estimating the value of the furniture they are accused of stealing at around $1 million.
Modesto residents Fermen Guererro, 32, Daniel Rodriguez, 24, and Salvador Martinez, 53, are being held in San Joaquin County Jail on multiple counts of residential burglary, conspiracy and possession of stolen property.
Police said the trio would target homes with “for sale” signs or that belonged to commuters. They would drive up in a moving van and rob the house of items likes couches, stoves and televisions.
After making initial appearances in Tracy Superior Court on Tuesday afternoon, they are expected to enter pleas today at 1 p.m. All three are being held on $50,000 bail.
Tracy Police Detective Dan Pasquale said they may be responsible for as many as 60 such crimes in Tracy, Mountain House and Modesto over the past two months. Items found in a storage locker in Tracy, which Pasquale called “the tip of the iceberg” in recovered stolen property, were valued at $100,000, but he estimated they may have taken over $1 million worth of property. “When you have a burglary … it’s usually something easy to take and run away with when you get it,” Pasquale said. “You can’t run away with a dinette set on your back. There has to be some pre-planning done to take apart a dinette set, unhook an oven or a washer and dryer.”
While
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serving a warrant on one suspect’s Modesto home, Pasquale said Crime Scene Technician Debbie Martin realized that some of the items pulled from the house matched the description of property stolen in Tracy a month earlier.
Pasquale said they are looking into the possibility that more people may have been involved, but their current priority is getting the stolen property back their rightful owners.
Anyone who may have been a victim of such a crime is asked to call the Tracy Police Department at (209) 831-4550 and ask for Detective Hooks or Detective Pasquale.
The big break in the case came around 9:30 Friday morning, when police received a call of a burglary in progress on the 2000 block of Monique Street in Tracy. The caller — a neighbor of the house being broken into — said someone had driven off with a big-screen television in a gray, older Toyota-style pickup followed by a white Honda, Pasquale said.
Police stopped a Honda near Chrisman and Linne roads, and a short time later Guererro was positively identified by the witness as one of the people who broke into the neighbor’s house, investigators said.
Guererro’s address was listed as a home on the 1300 block of Vernon Avenue in Modesto. When police arrived, they found a gray Toyota pickup in the driveway with Rodriguez and Martinez inside.
After serving a warrant on the house, police found a 55-inch television, Pasquale said. Investigators also recovered dining and living room sets, grandfather clocks, a matching washer and dryer and two sink basins.
They would develop a “shopping list” of items they wanted after getting fliers for homes for sale or visiting model homes, Pasquale said. He said many of the fliers contained pictures of items found in the Modesto home.
Mike Martinez can be reached at (209) 832-3947 or at mmartinez@trivalleyherald.com.