Original subtitles

In this episode of American Greed. Our mission is to lift the spirits and

gladden the hearts.

Jim Reynolds and his family raised $187 million promising to help cancer

victims. He's not a big fellow, but boy, he has a big heart.

It's a pitch that pulls at the heartstrings, but it's all a lie.

A lot of good people gave a lot of good money for a lot of good reasons, and it

just went nowhere positive.

The Reynolds family uses donated money to live the good life, and suffering

victims seeking comfort get junk instead.

We got a box, and it said Cancer Fund of America on it. But when we opened it

up, we were all in shock.

And later, all across the country, American girls are missing.

Dolls, that is.

And here it goes. The tag's off, and it's in the skirt, just like that.

For one family, thievery is the tie that binds.

What made the Bogdanoff such great thieves is that they work together as a

The Bogdanoff family crisscrosses the country on a toy -stealing crime spree

worth $7 .1 million.

The Bogdanoffs literally could not walk into a store without snatching something

on the way out.

The workday is done. The kids are home from school.

It's time to sit down for dinner.

Then the phone rings.

Hi, how you doing? Who are you? It's the Cancer Fund of America.

We're a 501c3 charity. We help cancer patients anywhere in the United States.

Now, what does this do? We provide those medical supplies and items for men,

women, and children with the fourth stage cancer.

We're helping the patients with this one, the people that need the help the

fighting the disease of cancer.

And we just wanted to be sure if the cancer patients could count on your

continued support. Would that be okay?

According to the National Cancer Institute, nearly 1 .7 million Americans

diagnosed with the dreaded disease each year.

So when someone asks for a small donation to help cancer patients, it may

like there's only one humane response.

Well, I'll go ahead and give $20.

Oh, great, ma 'am. Great. Thank you.

When you hear the word cancer, it then shivers through your spine.

And so when you hear of a charity that is...

offering to provide some level of relief or assistance to either a family or a

victim of cancer, you automatically, you know, want to help.

We all know family members who have cancer or died of cancer, and we want to

there when this catastrophe hits the family.

It's out of this desire to help that one man has built a thriving family

business. Our mission is to lift the spirits and gladden the heart of the

because when cancer strikes, So devastating to the family.

Launched in the 1980s in Knoxville, Tennessee, the Cancer Fund of America is

brainchild of a former Army medic named Jim Reynolds Sr.

Oh, he was looked up to.

Marilyn Rasmussen lives in Knoxville, where she attends church with Reynolds.

He was highly respected, at least in the church, because he had a charity.

After hearing about Reynolds' successful charity at church,

Rasmussen learns what they're really doing in 2002, when her father -in -law

Eddie is diagnosed with cancer.

We got a box in the mail out of Clear Blue Sky, and it said Cancer Fund of

America on it. We didn't ask for it, but it cheered my father -in -law up when

he saw the box.

You know, he was real excited, and we were too.

The box, and many like it, are paid for with donations brought in by an army of

telemarketers.

They called it sales. They didn't call it, you know, fundraising. They called

sales. At a nondescript office in the Detroit suburbs, Ebony Squirewell first

goes to work for a fundraising offshoot of the Cancer Fund of America in 2003.

Some people will have to learn to be good at it, but I was good at it right

away.

Squirewell sees the opportunity as more than just a way to pay the bills.

It's a very sensitive topic when it comes to cancer because there are cancer

patients in my family. So I said, oh, okay, if it's to help cancer patients,

I'll do it.

It's been years since she made calls she thought were helping, but the scripted

pitch she gave is still seared in her mind.

Hello, this is Ebony from the Cancer Fund of America Support Services. How

you today?

He would say, fine. I said, well, great. We're calling really brief. We're

continuing our cancer rate program where we're helping cancer patients with

their medical supplies and hospice care.

Anything we can do to help these cancer patients in their time of need, we just

wanted to make sure we can get you out a pledge card and count on you for your

support. Would that be okay?

Over the years, Squirewell becomes an expert at bringing in cash for a cause

believes in.

And while she has daily contact with the managers who run the call room, she

never actually meets the man behind the curtain.

Hello, I'm Jim Reynolds. I'm president for the Cancer Fund of America.

This is our national headquarters here, and we'd like to welcome you.

Before starting his charity, Reynolds worked at the well -known and unrelated

American Cancer Society, which focuses on cancer research.

When he sets out on his own, he creates a pitch meant to set his new charity

apart. Now, there's nothing wrong with research.

I hope they find a cure for cancer through research someday.

But there's so many organizations out there doing research that the few

we could put into research would be like a drop in the ocean. I think the Cancer

Fund of America was smart, if you could use that phrase with this group, by

saying to people, we're going to help people who have the disease right now.

Art Taylor of the Better Business Bureau's Wise Giving Alliance says

value in differentiation.

Yeah, there are others out there doing research.

That's fine, but when will we ever find the cure for cancer?

People need help today, and that's what we're going to do. We're going to help

them right now.

There's many people out there that research is just too late for.

We've got to do something to help.

CFA and their callers give potential donors a laundry list of ways they're

helping. You're going to provide them with transportation, pain medication,

know, medical supplies.

These are all things that they represented Cancer Fund would provide.

And they say it's all done on a massive scale.

The Cancer Fund of America is the only national cancer charity that has

commodities and financial aid to victims of cancer as its major priority. In

this past year alone, CFA has tended to the needs of some 70 ,000 clients with

items designed to lift their spirits and improve their lives.

Helping out with pain meds, transportation, and hospice sounds like

venture. Without your help, this warehouse could stand empty.

In this video, made for telemarketers like Ebony Squirewell, they make it

that they can't do it alone.

And over 450 hospices with more than 5 ,000 patients would not have some of the

things necessary to ease the suffering and pain, as well as sustaining their

nutritional health.

If this type of encouragement isn't enough, there are other ways to keep

fundraisers busy.

We were never allowed to accept no.

Squire Wells says her job depended on hitting a quota, and persistence was

essential.

If they say no, then I'll give them a smaller amount.

You know, I'll give them a smaller amount. They say no to 50, I'll say 25.

They say no to 25, I'll say 15.

They say no to 15, I'll say 10. You know, I'm going to make you say yeah,

because, again, I'm not asking for anything today.

I'm just asking to send a pledge card out to you and counting on you for your

support. Is that okay?

Provided with a list of rebuttal answers meant to turn a no into a yes,

Squirewell says she could always count on getting a pledge from a certain

target. Older people.

And pretty much knew that the rebuttals would get the older people.

The calls made by Squirewell and many, many other employees add up in a big,

way.

Between 2008 and 2012, CFA and two other cancer charities run by the Reynolds

family raised $187 million.

But what are they actually doing?

In the fall of 2002, Marilyn Rasmussen's father -in -law, Eddie, opens the box

he got from CFA and finds out.

There were a couple of bags of chips in there.

There was a coloring book. There was little crayons. There was a baby doll.

There was nothing there that he could use.

There was nothing there to give him comfort.

This is one of the items that was in the box that my husband's father received.

It's the only thing that we saved because I like wild animals. I think

of funny because the bottom of it says storm brewing.

But I have to ask you, what does this have to do with helping somebody with

cancer? How is this supposed to give him comfort?

I mean, it's pretty, and I love animals, but it didn't help my father -in -law

any. It was just a bunch of things put together in a box. It looked like

somebody went through their warehouse and just threw things in the box and

just closed it up and shipped it out.

And I was just, I was shocked.

Eddie Rasmussen dies a few months later, and his daughter -in -law says the

cancer fund's box felt like one last indignity.

When he got that box, you know, he was in a lot of physical pain. He was

suffering, and that really did not help him any.

Next on American Greed, find out who's really cashing in at the Reynolds Family

Cancer Charities.

It makes you sick to your stomach.

It makes you actually sick.

This is where it all begins.

This is the back part of our building. We have a 10 ,000 square foot warehouse.

Jim Reynolds Sr.

brings in a fortune promising to help those in need.

We begin to understand that no person is alone in our society as long as we care

and are there to help.

For years, donors are promised their money will be used to provide pain

medications, to transport patients to chemo appointments, and to pay for

care. You know, there were some things that you...

had to say in the script. You know, you had to say that you were helping cancer

patients with medical supplies and hospice care.

But there's a glaring problem.

They did not purchase pain medication, they did not provide hospice care, and

they did not provide transportation.

None of the money went to those three programs because they simply didn't

Instead, patients get boxes, like the one received by Marilyn Rasmussen's

-in -law.

Some contain potentially useful items like instant breakfast, adult diapers,

bed pads.

Others contain curious odds and ends that are of no particular use to cancer

patients. Things like sample -sized toiletries, over -the -counter

toys, makeup, DVDs, and certain food items which Reynolds later tries hard

to justify.

Originally, a lot of the packs included little Debbie snack cakes, which I think

he explained in a deposition made people happy.

And at some point, they switched to providing moon pies, which he explained

people happier.

Moon pies aren't the only way Reynolds says his charity is making patients

happy. Last year, we started a program just for children in addition to the

regular programs that we have giving products out. We started writing checks.

And we've written, to date, 1 ,375 checks for a total of $95 ,000.

While it sounds good, the program delivers just a fraction of what's been

promised. If you look at the actual records of that, the amount they

was paltry. It was in the thousands of dollars, even though they were raising

billions of dollars.

Less than 3 % actually went to cancer patients and victims.

That's appalling. This would offend...

even organized criminals and mobsters.

So where, then, is the rest going?

Most of it goes to shady telemarketing companies.

Year after year, Reynolds and his family's charities sign contracts with

fundraisers, allowing them to keep 80 to 95 percent of the money they bring in.

A vast proportion of every dollar that a consumer gave for direct assistance.

to cancer patients, their families, went into the pockets of the telefunders.

Though these fees may seem criminally high, the Supreme Court has recognized

charity fundraising as a form of free speech.

Lawmakers can't limit what telemarketers charge or force them to disclose their

take up front.

Charities are free to spend as much money as they choose on fundraising.

What they can't do is lie. If they lie, then they can be prosecuted for fraud.

But most people don't ask the question. And the real question consumers should

be asking is how much of the money goes to the program.

In other words, if you tell me you're raising money to give to cancer

how much will cancer patients actually receive?

After telemarketers take their huge cut, it's time for the Reynolds family to

get what's left.

Cancer Fund was really almost a full employment operation for James Reynolds

and his family.

As seen in this chart of intertwined relationships, CFA spins off two

franchises, the Breast Cancer Society run by Reynolds' son and the Children's

Cancer Fund of America run by senior's ex -wife.

At all three charities, helping cancer patients takes a back seat to providing

unnecessary jobs to unqualified family and friends.

and paying them unjustifiable salaries.

This self -dealing goes on for years, thanks to supposedly independent boards

that are stacked with people whose main qualification is their lack of

independence. The board members were acquaintances, friends, people that

Reynolds Sr. put on the board, and they exercised no real meaningful oversight.

You don't have anybody who's going to say...

Wait a minute, too much of the money is being paid for bonuses, for benefits,

for cars, for credit cards, for tuition, for loans, when the only person who is

responsible for that is the patriarch of the family.

Even in years when donations fall, the charities cut programs but raise

salaries. It makes me sick to know that many of these people were earning more

in salary than they were actually contributing to people with cancer.

It makes you actually thick.

With little to no oversight, money for cancer victims pays instead for company

cars, college tuitions, gym memberships, jet ski outings, cruises, and trips to

Disney World.

Plus, fees for dating websites, tickets to concerts and sporting events, meals

at Hooters, and purchases at Victoria's Secret.

And Reynolds is free to enjoy it all in a half -million -dollar house

overlooking a lake.

And what he built was an empire of family members, greed, and a culture

the exact opposite of charity.

This was an organization that was built just for their own personal benefit.

This should have been shut down immediately.

Up next on American Greed. Nobody had ever looked at all of these

together.

Investigators look close at the Reynolds family cancer charities and uncover the

deep web of connections that's allowed their deceit to continue.

Every time somebody needed an executive level salary, they would start a new

organization.

But sometimes when we have cash in our pocket, we don't use it for what we

should or what we need, but we'll use it for other things.

Jim Reynolds and his charities bring in millions despite a sordid history that

actually goes back decades.

What they're talking about is Cancer Fund of America.

News reports say he set up the Cancer Fund after being fired from a legitimate

cancer organization for stealing a car.

Soon after setting up his own so -called charity, Reynolds found himself in hot

water. Connecticut and Pennsylvania have filed separate lawsuits against Cancer

Fund of America.

Both complaints allege that in 1990, Cancer Fund of America participated in a

scheme to donate near -worthless goods.

Despite lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit, donors keep opening their

for Reynolds Charities.

The public isn't going to like this, but ultimately the burden is on each of us

as donors to make sure that we're giving to legitimate charities. If donors had

gone to our website and looked up the Cancer Fund of America, they would have

seen a report with a big red exclamation point warning them to avoid that

charity at all costs. And we look at areas such as how well a charity is

governed. Though it's possible to ferret out bad charities by researching them

on sites like Charity Navigator or the Better Business Bureau's Give .org, few

people take the time to do so. And for those who do check them out, Reynolds &

Company takes steps to falsely make themselves look more efficient than they

are. Remember that junk in a box?

They use their tax forms to report hugely inflated values for everything

give away.

What they would do is take a pill that in reality should be valued at two cents

and value it on their book as being donated at a value of a dollar.

It's an accounting trick, and it allows inefficient charities to make themselves

look more efficient than they really are.

This tricky accounting creates the illusion that more of their money is

cancer patients than to themselves and their fundraisers.

And hiding what they do is only part of what allows them to continue on.

There's really not enough cops on the beat in this area. The charity's law

enforcement regulatory community is pretty small.

Most state charity regulators don't have the kind of resources that they need to

look into every case. Many people expect that the IRS...

is going to be the agency that will go after unscrupulous charities.

But the IRS is not really set up to do lots and lots of audits of charities

either. In this environment, a bad actor could simply pay a fine in one state

and keep ripping off consumers elsewhere.

In the past, when there was this type of abusive practice,

I believe that a state would almost pass the trash to the next state. An

organization would be investigated.

They would shut down and then go to another community and then take

a whole different set of donors.

Recently,

though, charity regulators have begun banding together to go after bad

charities, hoping that a joint action will leave them no safe harbor.

Nobody had ever looked at all of these organizations.

Over lunch at a conference in 2010, Elizabeth Korsmo, an assistant attorney

general in New Mexico, and a colleague from Missouri discussed using this multi

-state strategy against the Reynolds family.

They made the recommendation that they thought this organization was somewhat

suspicious. And literally that is how this probe began. It was two government

professionals being concerned and began to move forward. And it became one of

the largest actions in the history of this country.

I believe it was on the Cancer Fund website. They had a listing of their

employees. Working with investigator Elena Goodman, CORSMO helps establish

deep web of connections between the Cancer Fund of America and other

Family Charities.

Once those relationships were revealed, then we could see how, instead of just

one charity that had poor fundraising costs and poor program expenses,

we could see how this was an intentional setup that had expanded.

Every time somebody needed an executive -level salary, they would start a new

organization.

As their knowledge of the charities grows, all 50 states and the District of

Columbia join together with the Federal Trade Commission in a joint effort to

shut down Reynolds' cancerous effort.

And the news begins to spread.

The names sound charitable, but a lawsuit filed by the FTC in all 50

calls these charities shams. Next on American Greed, after decades of

the public, Reynolds faces justice.

And then, a different kind of thieving family, pursued by a dogged detective in

the case of the missing... dolls?

See, I never thought that I'd be talking to American Greed.

over hundreds of missing American Groval products.

In May 2015, charity regulators from every corner of the country filed a

complaint in Arizona, which eventually leads to the shuttering of the Reynolds

family charities.

This is an historic moment.

the first time the federal government and all of the state charity regulators

have joined together to present a united front against charity fraud.

Reynolds is banned from ever running a charity again and is slapped with a $75

million judgment.

He's forced to sell off what's left of the charity and hand over his pontoon

boat, two guns, and a collection of beer signs.

But he'll only have to pay up if he reenters the charity business or if he's

found to have hidden his assets.

Reynolds did not respond to repeated requests from American Greed for

But in court documents, he remains unrepentant and summarizes his decades

with a Mormon hymn that reads, Have I done any good in the world today? Have I

helped anyone in need?

Have I cheered up the sad, made someone feel glad? If not, I have failed indeed.

Neither Reynolds nor any family member has faced criminal prosecution for the

scam that brought in $187 million.

You can commit petty crimes in America and go to jail, and yet this Mr.

Reynolds can create a license to steal from any good American, and he won't see

the inside of a jail cell, and there's something wrong with that type of

In 2013, at a Barnes & Noble in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 45 American

dolls worth more than $1 ,000 have gone missing.

The next day, a few hours down the road in Alpharetta, Georgia, 64 more of the

dolls, each costing $24, disappeared.

It's quite unusual to have that much product come missing in such a short

window.

When thieves strike, it's time for Barnes & Noble investigator Glenn

step in.

It was absolutely unique in my career to have something materialize so quickly.

So the stores were able to quickly assemble images of who they really

was responsible.

Entering right now is the first unidentified male.

The investigation begins with a look at store surveillance video that captures

the comings and goings of all honest customers and would -be thieves.

And I'll pause the video here.

I want to point out her skirt.

This is a pleated skirt. You can see that it's clearly flat on the front and

flows freely as she's walking.

To the untrained eye, a skirt is just a skirt.

But to store Detective Glenn Justice, it could be a shoplifter's shopping bag.

She will be followed by a female, blonde hair, pulled back, blue jeans in her

30s. Okay, and here they are exiting. I want to point out the skirt.

It's no longer hugging her body.

It's actually protruding. The reason for that is it's concealed underneath of

that in a pouch.

or every single American Girl doll that was in the store at the time.

All right, so this is the very next day in Alpharetta, Georgia, right, a suburb

of greater Atlanta, Georgia. And in the store comes the same female, same skirt,

followed by the male right behind that, just the same female, hair pulled back,

blonde, blue jeans, entering the store.

Justice has spotted the same trio entering the victimized stores 224 miles

apart.

There's no doubt in my mind at that time that these are the same three

individuals that hit Tennessee, which is a consistent behavior with a

professional shoplifter. I realized that all I had was images of three people,

and it was my job to leverage that into what their identities were.

There used to be a time when detectives would hit local pawn shops to see if

anyone had come in trying to unload stolen goods.

Now they start somewhere else.

The online marketplaces, i .e. Amazon, eBay, and a plethora of others, have

given the ability to quickly lift and sell large quantities of stolen product.

However, that is a double -edged sword.

All of the listings and sales of that product can be researched quite quickly

and efficiently to ferret out this type of activity.

Using special software, it's possible to find missing items if you know what to

look for.

In this case, American Girl minis sold in mass quantities at prices that are

below retail.

I conducted a search, and it returned two accounts and two accounts only. In

less than seven minutes, I knew who my culprits were.

Working with eBay, he learns the suspect accounts are from the Chicago area.

One belongs to a 71 -year -old man who Justice suspects may be the fence, that

is, the person buying and selling products for the thieves.

The other account leads to a husband and wife named Bronco and Layla Bogdanoff,

as well as their daughter Julia.

A Google search turns up criminal histories and mugshots, and when he

them to the people caught on camera, Justice knows he's on to his thieves.

Being able to pull that ghost out of thin air and put an identity with them,

is, it's intoxicating.

And when the final numbers come in, Justice sees that along with their

the Bogdanoffs have stolen an astounding $7 .1 million worth of merchandise.

$7 million was quite a surprise.

As a matter of fact, to date, that's probably the very largest, most

case that I have been involved with.

Next on American Greed, the products they target may be small, but the family

business has the Bogdanoffs living large.

And the type of living they were able to sustain by chronic theft, yeah, it was

disturbing. Could you spot the Bogdanoffs in action? Take a closer look

thievery at AmericanGreed .CNBC .com.

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Join the Greed social network.

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Making off with millions, the Bogdanoff family is part of a big problem that

CNBC retail reporter Courtney Reagan says is only getting bigger.

The National Retail Federation estimates that $45 billion in losses occur in

retail due to shrinkage. Shrinkage being the retail industry term for inventory

loss, which comes from theft by either consumers or employees or goods that are

otherwise damaged or unsellable. When an item disappears off the shelf, who

ultimately pays the price?

When you're thinking about the prices that shoppers pay at stores, if you see

store or a retailer that has a high amount of shrinkage or theft, that means

that is not a profit, it's a loss. And in order to make up for that loss,

they're going to have to increase the prices, which ultimately means that

shoppers can end up paying more to make up for the dishonesty.

With thievery on the rise, the Bogdanoffs are some of the best in the

It seemed like theft was a way of life for the Bogdanoffs.

According to former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti, there's a secret to

their success.

What made the Bogdanoffs such great thieves is that they worked together as

team. I mean, this is a family that had been working together for years.

You had the father, Bronco Bogdanoff, who would remove, you know, difficult to

remove security wrappings off of.

You had the mother, Layla Bogdanoff, who would be able to secrete items in her

skirt, hide things in a way that would be difficult for store personnel to find

and make them hesitant to search.

And then, of course, you had the daughter, Julia Bogdanoff, who would

them as a lookout, looking to see if store employees were paying attention,

if they were, to quickly interfere with them so that the other two could make a

getaway. Here's another example of the bug on us. You're going to see here the

EAS, the security activation.

The daughter's role running interference can be seen very clearly in this video.

Julia's role, again, is to intercept any employee that would try to follow and

stop her mother and father.

Here you see the employees responding to the activation of the security device.

She's engaging them in conversation to try to give mom and dad time to get in

their vehicle and flee.

So this is just a great illustration of how they operate.

The Bogdanoff success starts before they go into a store with research on

consumer demand.

They chose their product brilliantly.

All of the product that they would target was brand new, in demand,

easily monetized.

The Bogdanoffs were smart enough.

to locate the highest value items they could think of that were small and could

fit inside a skirt. So they would go after Lego sets.

Not the $10 Lego sets or $20 Lego sets that you buy for your little kid to play

with, but expensive Lego sets that were collector's items that would retail for

several hundred dollars each.

Their thievery from stores including Barnes & Noble and Toys R Us makes them

millions, and the Bogdanoffs live the good life.

It's hard to believe that stealing toys and electronics could get you a $1 .3

million house in a rich Chicago suburb. That's exactly what happened for Bronco

and Layla Boganoff. They lived in a luxurious home.

They had many cars, some of them luxury cars.

They lived a very good quality of life without appearing to be working

legitimately at all.

In December, Glenn Justice travels to Chicago and confronts the man he

is the Bogdanoff's fence.

The fence listened, and after about a minute and a half, interrupted me and

said, Mr. Justice, I think I know where this conversation's going.

I'm not stealing any of this product.

I'm getting it from a specific individual.

Justice goes with the 71 -year -old gift shop owner to his home and follows him

into his garage.

And I truly wasn't prepared for what I was going to see.

It was laid out like a good stock room. Three of the four walls had shelves with

product neatly stacked by category and type. And in front of me on the shelves

were hundreds of my Missing American Girl doll product right in front of me.

Do I have your permission to record this conversation?

Yes, you do.

The man agrees to tape a recorded statement and tells Justice all about

who's been selling him goods for years, a business associate he knows not as

Bronco, but Franco.

Unlike most multimillion -dollar crime partnerships, however, theirs starts

tiny, plush collectibles.

How did you meet him initially?

He approached me in my gift shop with Beanie Babies to sell.

From that initial meeting over Beanie Babies, a relationship flourishes.

Can you describe some of the product that you've bought from him over the

please? Baby monitors, baby carriers, toys such as Surveys,

American Girl Mini Dolls, VTech electronic toys, NanoBlock,

Lego Movie House.

Over a decade, he's turned Franco's Goods into a thriving business on eBay.

What would you estimate the yearly income, gross income, to be over the

several years?

The last couple of years, it's been about $200 ,000.

Can you estimate how many items you have sold on your account over the course of

its history?

At least 100 ,000.

What percentage of products sold on your eBay account was supplied by Franco in

your estimation?

90 to 95%. The tape in hand, Justice can feel the case of the missing dolls

coming together.

But first, he needs to shut down his thieves.

Literally, while I am speaking with the fence in his garage with all of the

product that's stolen.

The Bogdanovs are in southern Florida, near the Fort Lauderdale area, stealing

from my stores.

Next on American Greed, the feds join the hunt for the Bogdanovs, and Justice

gets his first clear look at their thievery in action.

So here we go. Pay attention. It happens quickly. And here it goes. The tag's

off, and it's in the skirt, just like that.

In January 2014,

Glenn Justice brings the Bogdanoff case to Chicago to present it to the U .S.

Secret Service and Renato Mariotti, then a federal white -collar crime

prosecutor. When I was assigned the investigation of the Bogdanoffs, I was

investigating what I thought were some extremely important financial crime

cases. And I was looking at this case and I was thinking to myself, they want

to investigate.

A group of people who are stealing toys.

It just didn't make sense to me at all.

After I talked to Glenn Justice, I realized that these people were stealing

scale that was hard to imagine.

Millions of dollars worth of toys on the tracks were being stolen.

Mariotti decides that it's no longer time for slaps on the wrist.

He wants to charge this band of shoplifters with a federal crime.

To do so, he treats the investigation like a drug case, obtaining a warrant to

track Bronco's cell phone, hoping to catch the family in the act of

stolen goods across state lines.

Suddenly the phone was on the move. They were traveling out of state, and they

ended up going to Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, through Mississippi. They

over the place, stealing as they went. As the Bogdanoffs head south, They have

no idea they're under surveillance.

They watched them go into an Apple store and come out. They watched them go into

a Starbucks, come out. They watched them go into Toys R Us, come out.

And what we found out afterwards when we talked to people for each of those

stores is that literally there were thefts at every single store. When they

to Starbucks, they stole 10 bags of coffee. When they went to the FedEx

they stole packing supplies.

The Bogdanoffs literally could not walk into a store without snatching something

on the way out. Julia, Layla, settling in. They're looking for product that

want to target.

When the Bogdanoffs enter a Toys R Us in Houston, investigators have Glenn

Justice contact the company, whose employees follow their every move on

And this video will illustrate exactly how the Bogdanoffs operate.

When they first go in, the Bogdanoffs wander the aisles until they find the

product they've come to collect.

This time, it's Lego Mindstorm blocks, which have a retail value of $350 per

set. Ultimately, they are going to go over to where the Lego Mindstorm product

is. Bingo, there you go. There's selection of one Lego Mindstorm.

Selection of number two. You can clearly see that's what it is in the cart. And

then Layla is going to grab another piece of... merchandise and place it on

so that store employees won't see that mine storm being pushed throughout the

store. Having found the goods, Bronco is on the move, looking for the perfect

spot in which to work.

What you're seeing now is Bronco and Layla trying to find an aisle way where

they're comfortable to remove the security devices and conceal it. Right

you see that? He's actually looking at the camera. He was physically looking to

see Is there a camera there? Is it watching me?

And, hey, this might not be a good idea. Let's go to another aisleway.

Once they've found the right place, everyone gets to work.

You're going to see Bronco wrestling with something on the box. Well, that's

something on the box.

It's a security device.

Layla and Julia block the ends of the aisle so no one happens to walk by and

what Bronco's up to.

And he's going to try to loosen it enough, and then once it's removed,

hand that to Layla. And here it goes. The tag's off, and it's in the skirt.

Just like that.

You see her fluffer skirt?

That big box is gone.

Now we're going to do it again.

She's going to grab it.

And go in this side of her skirt. So here we go. Pay attention. Happens

Right -hand side of the skirt.

Look around.

Into the slit.

In the pouch.

Gone. So if you can imagine this several times a day, right? Do this. Take as

many as they can. Leave.

Go to the next store. Do the same thing until the sun goes down.

Investigators watch and wait while the stolen goods are moved across state

back to Illinois.

When Bronco calls the feds to unload the hot items, feds move in to make

arrests.

Investigators say Bronco Bogdanoff and his family were able to live in this

fabulous Northbrook mansion because they were highly efficient criminals,

specializing in shoplifting at stores across America.

When federal agents searched the Bogdanoff mansion, They found a treasure

of merchandise.

Everything from the baby monitors and toys to cutlery, various clothing items,

all sorts of stuff that you might imagine at a department store, but it

right in the Bogdanoff's house.

We had caught them red -handed.

In November 2015, the Bogdanoffs all plead guilty to charges of conspiracy

interstate transportation of stolen goods.

During her court appearances, Layla seems less than contrite, blaming the

thievery on her Roma or gypsy upbringing.

Layla Bogdanoff's attorney argued on multiple occasions that Layla was born

a culture, a Roma culture, in which she was taught that stealing was something

that was okay to do. It was actually a God -given right that she had.

No one buys it. No matter what your background is, you have to follow the

And no matter who told you, God or your mother or father, stealing from other

people is just never the right thing to do. In 2016, a federal judge in Chicago

sentenced his husband and wife, Bronco and Layla Bogdanoff, to four years and

three years, respectively.

Their daughter, Julia, gets just over a year.

Even with this gang of thieves behind bars, shoplifting remains a multi

dollar problem.

And one day, The Bogdanoffs will walk free.

I hope that a stay in federal prison convinces the Bogdanoffs that they need

change their life.

But unfortunately, based on the information I have, it appears that

only job that they've ever known.