Maryland’s Nathaniel Owens, who just pleaded guilty to charges of ripping off a high-end outlet in Massachusetts that could net him 10 years in prison, found out that thieving isn’t very Gucci.
Federal prosecutors say that Owens, 33, is part of a Washington D.C. crew responsible for a series of east coast thefts from luxury brand stores that drew the attention of the FBI. Owens is the second person of that group to plead guilty in federal court in Boston to charges that he ripped off the Gucci store in the Wrentham Village Premium Outlets mall in 2021.
Owens pleaded guilty Thursday to one count of conspiracy to transport stolen goods in interstate commerce and one count of interstate transportation of stolen goods. This follows co-conspirator Linworth Hayes Crawford III’s guilty plea on Feb. 3. Crawford is scheduled to be sentenced on June 3. U.S.
District Judge Allison D. Burroughs scheduled Owens’ sentencing for July 19. The first count carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and the second count carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
A third co-defendant, Ronald Patterson Jr., has pleaded not guilty to similar charges. All three were indicted in January 2023. Patterson’s trial date is pending.
Shortly before 12:30 a.m. on Sept. 17, 2021, a burglar alarm sounded at the Premium Outlets Suite 545, the Gucci store. When police arrived, the front glass to the store had been smashed in. Video surveillance showed that four men had entered, according the the FBI affidavit supporting the indicted charges. An employee accounting the next day showed that $32,000 of the “high-end” clothing had been stolen.
The crime hit FBI Special Agent Geoffrey Kelly’s radar. As he wrote in his affidavit, the theft matched others he had seen targeting the luxury brands Gucci, Burberry, Canada Goose and Moose Knuckles since Oct. 12, 2020.
“Based on the method of operation of the subjects responsible for these commercial burglaries,” he wrote in the affidavit, “I believe that these burglaries are all connected.”
The first person suspected and tied to the crimes was the defendant who has pleaded not guilty. Law enforcement says that Patterson “was trying to be a model,” according to the affidavit, and was very active on social media. The FBI says that Patterson on Instagram “posted images of the bags for sale, which appeared to be identical to the Gucci bags stolen during the robbery.”
With one defendant positively identified, the FBI was able to obtain phone records that they say connected him with the other defendants, who the FBI then matched to the surveillance videos, according to prosecutors.
The remainder of the affidavit details how the FBI tracked the crew up and down the East Coast between Wrentham and D.C. based on these phone records and a little open source intelligence work analyzing Patterson’s Instagram postings during the time.
Patterson allegedly posted travelogs to his Instagram account. Even when he attempted to disguise where he was, like captioning a photo that featured a Waffle House in the background as “New Jersey,” a state without the restaurant chain, investigators used background details to suss out the crew’s whereabouts, according to the affidavit.
Investigators then used this information to piece together the trio’s travels and corroborated this information with security footage from various stops between the cities, including at Waffle House, a Sunglass Hut, and a Town Fair Tire. Screenshots of this video surveillance footage was included in the FBI affidavit.