The stolen devices were all traced back to one location: A Quickly boba tea shop on Larkin Street right in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco.
Quoc Le, the 41-year-old boba shop proprietor, was arrested Monday and faces at least a dozen felony and misdemeanor charges of “possession of stolen property.”
And on Tuesday, in a stunning revelation, Boudin announced his arrest was part of an operation known as “Operation Auto Pilot” — which uncovered an “massive global operation” of car thefts and illicit electronic sales that reached as far wide as Vietnam and Hong Kong.
“Auto burglaries in San Francisco have, for at least a decade, been one of the leading categories of crime. We know that it’s had a devastating impact, not only on our own residents, but on … the entire tourist industry.”
In 2021, there was a total of 20,663 “theft from vehicle” incidents reported to police — a 39 percent increase from the year before, but lower than the peak of over 31,000 in 2017. Only a fraction of them lead to an arrest, Boudin said.
San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin speaks to reporters in San Francisco, Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020.
Jeff Chiu / Associated Press 2020How the sting worked, Boudin explained in a press conference Tuesday afternoon, feels ripped out of a “Law and Order” episode.
Under Operation Auto Pilot, which has been in the works for at least two years, “bait cars” were placed in “strategic locations” throughout San Francisco with high rates of car theft — Japantown and Alamo Square among them.
Inside these vehicles were bags of electronics, embedded with tracking devices. The goal was not to arrest thieves on the street, Boudin said, but to see how far this trade of stolen goods went. “The goal of this operation was to map out the flow of stolen goods in San Francisco and beyond, to identify the networks that are moving millions and millions of dollars of stolen goods from cars in San Francisco around the country and the world.”
Where those devices traveled to was stunning. Not only did they find these decoy devices and other stolen goods lead to the Larkin St. location of the stalwart boba franchise, but stolen devices were found as far as Europe and Asia.
Boudin said the team wrote and secured over a dozen search warrants that let them dig through “financial transactions and shipping activity.”
“Large volumes” of wares were being shipped to Texas, he added.
In all, Boudin said that his team gathered 130 boxes of electronics from the Quickly — and hope to find more individuals connected to this network of car break-ins. He alluded to “numerous locations under surveillance that are storage operations” for these rings.
This operation puts into question one of the tentpole advertisements made by the campaign to recall Boudin, in which former prosecutor Shirin Oloumi alleged that Boudin “dissolved that unit and prevented me from collaborating with the police.” (A report from progressive local outlet 48 Hills said that Oloumi, in her resignation letter, alluded to Operation Auto Pilot and commended its future success.)
Boudin responded to the recall effort explicitly in the presser. “There’s lots of people who are long on money and short on facts who have criticisms of this office,” he said. “I couldn’t be prouder of the work that our team is doing and has done with this operation.”
The operation was conducted in collaboration with the Department of Homeland Security, SF SAFE and local law enforcement. It is ongoing.
Le will be arraigned in court Tuesday afternoon.
