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Thursday, July 24, 2025

$5m heist: Hyatt warehouse raid caught on neighbours' cameras

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20161221

Po­lice are now on the look­out for peo­ple who may have been duped in­to buy­ing what they thought were high-priced flat screen tele­vi­sions for use as CCTV mon­i­tors at cut rate prices.

The 177 flat screen tele­vi­sions sets were in fact part of $5 mil­lion in items stolen by ban­dits from the Hy­att Re­gency ho­tel's ware­house last week.

With three days to go be­fore Christ­mas, res­i­dents in East Port-of-Spain thought they were get­ting a steal of a deal, hav­ing paid be­tween $500 and $800 for the 55 and 65-inch LCD tele­vi­sions, which are sold in some stores at be­tween $12,000 and $18,000.

Think­ing that they were giv­en a steal of a deal, the buy­ers, some of whom were from Beetham Gar­dens, lat­er dis­cov­ered that their new Christ­mas gifts were not pro­grammed for res­i­den­tial use. Many of them de­cid­ed to use the TVs as mon­i­tors for CCTV cam­eras but may now run afoul of the law if caught.

The rob­bery was com­mit­ted last Fri­day (De­cem­ber 16) by a group of brazen ban­dits at the ho­tel's Warn­er Vil­lage, Be­ju­cal ware­house. The ware­house was used to store brand new items which were to be in­stalled and out­fit­ted as part of the a ma­jor phys­i­cal up­grade planned by the ho­tel.

Among the items stolen were 177 flat screen tele­vi­sions, eight chan­de­liers and 335 art­work frames val­ued at US$ 552,609.03. Oth­er mis­cel­la­neous items which were al­so cart­ed away bring the to­tal fig­ure to $5 mil­lion, the T&T Guardian was told.

The ho­tel con­tract­ed a French firm to sup­ply and out­fit the items for its re­fur­bish­ment ex­er­cise.

Hy­att Re­gency is owned by the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott).

A source told the Trinidad Guardian that the thieves en­tered the com­pound of the ware­house, where they held up and hog-tied three se­cu­ri­ty guards and then dis­con­nect­ed the build­ing's CCTV cam­eras.

The ban­dits then gained en­try in­to the build­ing by cut­ting the locks on the doors. Sec­onds lat­er, two trucks and 12 cars pulled in­to and out­side the com­pound and the items were hasti­ly loaded on­to the ve­hi­cles, fol­low­ing which the thieves made good their es­cape.

"Some peo­ple are of the firm view that it is an in­side job. But the joke is the LCD tele­vi­sion sets they stole are vir­tu­al­ly use­less to them be­cause it is not pro­grammed for res­i­den­tial use. What is amaz­ing is that the thieves did not cov­er their faces, nor did they hid the num­ber plates of the ve­hi­cles," the source said.

For­tu­nate­ly, the rob­bery was cap­tured on the closed cir­cuit tele­vi­sions of near­by res­i­dents, which was sub­mit­ted to the Ch­agua­nas po­lice.

"That is what the per­pe­tra­tors did not bar­gain for," the source said.

Pho­tographs tak­en from the video, which the T&T Guardian ob­tained, showed the ban­dits com­mit­ting the rob­bery.

While some of the items may yet be re­cov­ered, the source said the way the thieves hur­ried­ly packed the items in­to the ve­hi­cle, they were cer­tain a num­ber of tele­vi­sions were dam­aged.

"More than like­ly, Hy­att would have to re-or­der all the items that were stolen."

The source said, none of the items were in­sured.

Some of the tele­vi­sion sets were sold at re­duced prices to un­sus­pect­ing Beetham Gar­dens res­i­dents be­tween last week and yes­ter­day.

"They were sold for peanuts com­pared to its orig­i­nal price of be­tween $12,000 to $18,000. When the buy­ers re­alised they could not use the TVs, they be­gan sell­ing it as mon­i­tors for sur­veil­lance cam­eras."

Po­lice ar­rest 7 with stolen items

The Hy­att Re­gency ho­tel is cur­rent­ly do­ing a ma­jor re­fur­bish­ment ex­er­cise, as part of a re­quire­ment that it un­der­go such ex­er­cis­es every sev­en years, a source told the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day.

On the Hy­att's web­site, a no­tice states the ho­tel is un­der­go­ing a re­fur­bish­ment ex­er­cise, which will be done in phas­es and com­plet­ed at the end of April 2017.

Ar­eas to be re­fur­bished are the ho­tel's en­trance, lob­by, bar, sushi bar, restau­rant and its 428 lux­u­ri­ous guest rooms.

Up­on re­ceipt of the items, the ho­tel stored them in its ware­house, which they have been us­ing for years.

On Tues­day, of­fi­cers from the Port-of-Spain Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tion De­part­ment (CID), led by Snr Supt Rad­cliffe Box­hill and ASP Ajith Per­sad, Sgt Austin, ar­rest­ed five peo­ple af­ter they went to Ro­main Lands, Mor­vant, ex­e­cut­ed a search war­rant and seized a 65-inch tele­vi­sion set iden­ti­fied as one stolen from the ware­house.

Two peo­ple in Beetham Gar­dens were al­so ar­rest­ed yes­ter­day af­ter po­lice re­cov­ered an­oth­er 65-inch tele­vi­sion.

Per­sad said yes­ter­day the in­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing.

Mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er of Hy­att, Neemah Per­sad, ad­mit­ted yes­ter­day that the rob­bery had tak­en place, but opt­ed not to is­sue a state­ment as the mat­ter was still be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

Chair­man of Ude­cott Noel Gar­cia re­fused com­ment.

Stolen items*Quan­ti­ty*Unit Price in US*To­tal cost in US

LG 65 inch LCD colour TV*159*$2,690.31*$427,759.29

(mod­el 65L X 570H)

LG 55 inch LED LCD colour TV *18*$1,891.43*$34,045.74

(mod­el 55 LX 570H)


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