A Tullibardine 1952 valued at $27,999 was among the four bottles stolen. (Provided)

By Rebecca Everett | For NJ.com

It's been a year since four men stole $52,000 in high-end Scotch from a Bergen County liquor store.

They made the heist look easy — popping the door of the locked glass display case, plucking out four bottles and walking out the door on a busy Friday evening — but the police investigation into the culprits has been anything but simple.

Police Chief Tom Cariddi doesn’t think these were just some Scotch aficionados trying to realize a dream of tasting a Tullibardine 1952.

None have been arrested, but at least one is suspected of being part of a Chilean theft ring that operates across the country, Cariddi said.

The network’s apparent use of aliases and fake IDs allowed the man to slip through authorities’ fingers in Texas two months after the New Jersey heist, and Cariddi said there hasn’t been any sign of him since.

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Theft of rare Scotch rocks North Jersey liquor superstore (PHOTOS) https://t.co/tMgSODxcNI pic.twitter.com/FvWjNNYXaF — NJ.com (@njdotcom) September 20, 2017

A year after the Sept. 15, 2017 theft from the Total Wine & More store, questions that remain unanswered include why the big-ticket booze was so easy to pinch from the sales floor and where the rare Scotch ended up.

Here’s an in-depth look at the caper, what we know about the thieves who pulled it off, and more.

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A surveillance photo shows three of the four men involved in the theft, including one popping the door open. (Provided)

How do you just walk out with $52K in Scotch?

It was between 6:25 p.m. and 7 p.m. on a Friday evening when four men walked into the Total Wine & More store off of Route 4.

Two of them pushed shopping carts, which they apparently used to partially block the view down the aisle as their co-conspirator actually broke into the locked case that held the Scotch, according to still from surveillance cameras.

“It was not a very secure lock,” Cariddi said, and the man popped the glass door off its track to get it open.

They picked out four bottles: a Tullibardine 1952 with a $28,000 price tag; a Highland Park 50-year-old Scotch worth $22,000 and a bottle of Maccallan V5 Reflexion valued at $1,900.

Ironically, given its name, they also took a $68 bottle of Pinch Scotch, Chief Cariddi said.

Surprisingly, he said, “they left a bottle on the shelf valued at $42,000.”

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Surveillance stills of the suspects. (Courtesy River Edge Police)

It’s not exactly clear how the men got the bottles out of the store, Cariddi said, as none of the staff witnessed it and the still surveillance photos don’t answer the question.

However, the photos do show something white draped across one of the shopping carts when the men enter the aisle, and photos of the men leaving the store show one of the men carrying a bulging, white bag out the door.

None of the store’s staff members noticed the men leaving with the Scotch and it wasn’t until the next day that anyone even noticed that the lavish liquor was not in the display case.

The surveillance photos show the men leaving in a blue Volvo XC60 with New York license plates, Cariddi said.

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Surveillance stills of the suspects. (Courtesy River Edge Police)

What did the investigation look like?

Since no one in the store witnessed the theft, police only had the surveillance photos and one set of fingerprints to go on.

They didn’t even know for sure how many people were involved with the theft, and when surveillance photos were made public, they showed six men leaving the store. However, Cariddi said after two of the men were identified and interviewed by police, investigators determined they were just customers and not involved in the theft.

It was fingerprint evidence coupled with the surveillance footage that helped police identify the man who had jumped the door off its track and removed the bottles. They are still trying to identify the other men.

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River Edge police put out a warrant for Angel Hernandez Silva. (Courtesy Highland Park police)

Who is the mystery man?

On Nov. 14, River Edge police issued a warrant for the arrest of Angel Hernandez Silva, on a third-degree charge of shoplifting items valued between $500 and $74,999.

But they’re not sure that’s really his name.

That’s because he uses at least four names, and it’s hard to tell which one, if any, is the real one, Cariddi said.

The fingerprints came back to Angel Hernandez Silva, so that’s the name they issued the warrant under.

There was no sign of him after the warrant issued, but then River Edge police heard from police in Highland Park, Texas, Cariddi said. They had had the man in their custody on another big-ticket shoplifting, but he had used a fake name and been released before the fingerprint results showed that he was a wanted man, Cariddi said. Not surprisingly, he did not show up to court in the Texas incident and River Edge police haven’t caught a whiff of him since.

Cariddi said that based on information his department has received from other authorities, including the U.S. Marshals, the man is a Chilean national who entered the U.S. on a passport with the name Jose Luis Miranda-Perez. Cariddi said there is a possibility that the passport was obtained with fraudulent documents, but it could be real.

“The intelligence information we’ve received is that he’s part of a Chilean theft group, where all the members originate in Chile,” he said.

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What do we know about this theft ring?

The chief said members of the crime group apparently hit retail stores all over the country, and at least one segment of the group is based in Arkansas.

“It’s not just liquor. Their thefts were wide-ranging,” he said.

He said authorities compared the photographs of the accomplices in the River Edge job to those of known members of the crime ring, but didn’t find any other matches. So, the guy’s association with the crime ring doesn’t necessarily mean he was working with them on the Total Wine & More theft.

Attempts to get more info from the U.S. Marshals Service on the Chilean crime group were unsuccessful. But reports from the man’s arrest in Texas do point towards an organized group that essentially employs people to shoplift or make fraudulent purchases of items that can turn a big profit on resale.

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Valentina Andrea Lobos-Vargo (Courtesy Highland Park police)

The Texas job

On Nov. 22, 2017, three people shoplifted a $2,400 purse from the Louboutin store at the Highland Park Shopping Village.

Authorities circulated a photo of the suspects at the mall and on Dec. 7, a manager at Hermes told an officer that staff believed two of the three suspects were currently in the luxury good store, according to a report from Highland Park police.

The officer stopped the pair and asked for their IDs. The man – who Cariddi said is the same from the River Edge heist — had a Puerto Rican license with the name Brayan Gonzalez.

The 31-year-old woman he was with had an ID bearing the name of a 46-year-old woman whose identity had apparently been stolen, police said.

Police wrote that the woman, who eventually gave her name as Valentina Andrea Lobos-Vargos, “stated that it was a ‘fake’ and was given to her by someone along with three fraudulent credit cards that she had in her possession.”

She went on to describe an arrangement that sounds suspicious, to say the least.

“She is from Chile, she lives out of hotels, someone gives her the ID and credit cards, drops her off, and then comes back to pick them up when they have purchased merchandise from the stores,” the police report said.

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The report did not say specify whether she meant that she purchased merchandise using the fraudulent credit cards as part of the scheme. There's no sign in the report that police investigated the crime organization any further, as Lobos-Vargas was only booked on charges of having false identifying documents.

The man who identified himself as Brayan Gonzalez confessed to stealing the $2,400 purse and was charged with a misdemeanor theft, the report said.

Both were fingerprinted but the original check came back negative, according to the report.

Cariddi said Highland Park police contacted his department soon after to notify them that the man had been arrested - but released from custody. The chief said that since then, their two departments, as well as authorities in New York and the U.S. Marshals, have been working together to try to find the man.

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The Scotch disappeared with the men in a Volvo with New York tags. (River Edge Police)

So what happened to the Scotch?

Cariddi said the investigation into where the bottles of Scotch ended up is still ongoing.

“With the value of the items and the lengths they went through, those weren’t for consumption,” he said. “They would have been for resale.”

Reselling any kind of liquor, stolen or not, is technically illegal if you don’t have a license. But with the collectibility and the big price tags of rare liquor — especially whiskeys — there are lots of people doing it.

According to BottleBlueBook.com, a website that lists the resale value of rare whiskeys, most people offload bottles through special brokers, collectors clubs or online, via private groups and social media. Some might use online marketplaces like Craigslist, even though it is prohibited, the site said.

A 2017 Marketplace article explored the growing black market for high-end bourbon. Many of the rare bottles are so sought after that they are allocated to stores a few at a time, according to the report, and people looking for a certain bottle may have an easier time buying it on the black market, from someone lucky enough to snag a bottle and "flip" it for a big profit.

Liquor resales are totally off the books, which would make it very difficult for authorities to track down a certain bottle.

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Bottles of Scotch in the River Edge Total Wine & More store on Oct. 5, 2018. (Rebecca Everett | For NJ.com)

Did Total Wine & More make any changes after the heist?

A manager at the River Edge store said “measures were taken” after the incident, but he couldn’t go into details because it would compromise store security.

Attempts to speak with anyone at Total Wine & More’s corporate office in Maryland were unsuccessful.

Not all of the chain’s stores have Scotch with such a high price tag, but the River Edge store still does. A recent visit to the store found bottles worth as much as $39,999 in what appears to be a similar style display case.

It is The Balvenie 50 year, which is the fifth most expensive Scotch on the market right now, according to Wine-searcher.com, which tracks average sales prices.

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Curtsinger admits having @WildTurkey barrels, steroids could get 15 yrs.His sentencing to be postponed until Searcy case finished. pic.twitter.com/mK9FCS5eta — Brad Bowman (@Bradleybowman) September 20, 2017

How common are these heists?

Cariddi said the Total Wine & More store has seen some “run-of-the-mill shopliftings,” but what happened last September was “pretty unique.”

There are plenty of headlines about expensive liquor thefts around the world, but not many appeared to be similar to the River Edge job.

In 2015, a man "possibly armed with a handgun" threatened staff in a Montreal liquor store, smashed a display case open and made off with a bottle of The Balvenie 50 year, according to the Toronto Sun.

In another Canadian caper, a man hid a 50-year-old Glenfiddich Scotch worth $26,000 under a trenchcoat, paid for a bottle of wine, and walked out of a Toronto store, The Globe and Mail reported in 2013.

Some of the most famous — and costly — liquor thefts were inside jobs.

For example, last year a man got 15 years in prison for helping to steal $100,000 worth of Pappy Van Winkle Family Reserve from the Buffalo Trace distillery in Kentucky, according to The Courier-Journal.

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Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @rebeccajeverett. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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