HOUSTON — It was an operation by turns sophisticated and brutish, employing financial databases, demographic data, pinpoint targets, the element of surprise and, not least, violence and intimidation, authorities say.

Its disparate members included a hulking Colombian national, an aspiring teenage model with a steady job and a troubled young man who relatives said had served his country in the U.S. Army.

Presiding over it all, authorities said, was a 39-year-old mother of five whom investigators likened to a modern-day Fagin, the grizzled vagabond who leads a band of street-wise pickpockets in the classic tale “Oliver Twist.”

For the past five months, and perhaps longer, the Houston-based crew has terrorized Asian and Asian-Indian communities across the eastern half of the United States, carrying out home-invasion robberies in which victims were bound with duct tape and, in some cases, beaten or pistol-whipped, authorities said.

The group — charged last week with five attacks in New Jersey during October and November — has now been linked to additional home invasions in Michigan, Georgia and Texas, police in those states said. Detectives in New York say the same suspects might be responsible for a Long Island home invasion on Halloween.

Through interviews with law enforcement officials and with family members and friends of the suspects, NJ Advance Media has developed the clearest portrait yet of the defendants, who face decades behind bars if convicted in the multistate crime spree. The interviews also show how investigators in various states pieced the case together, contributing critical strands of information that displayed the operation’s extraordinary reach.

One investigator, Detective Christopher Bradshaw of the Milton, Ga., police department, said he expects more charges will follow.

“Who knows where these guys have been?” Bradshaw said late last week. “There are places where we’ve already made connections, and that’s through the hard work of (investigators) in Michigan and New Jersey. But where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and there’s got to be more. It’s just a matter of connecting the dots.”

Because the suspects crossed state lines to allegedly commit crimes, they could be subject to federal charges. The U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, Paul Fishman, and other federal prosecutors have not said whether they will pursue the case.

At a press conference Monday, Middlesex County Prosecutor Andrew Carey identified the New Jersey suspects as Chaka Castro, 39, the woman who law enforcement officials have identified as a ringleader; Juan Fernando Olaya, 34; Octavius Scott, 22; and Johnisha Williams, 19.

A fifth person, Rodney Ray Granger, 19, has been charged in Texas and is suspected of taking part in a home invasion in Georgia, authorities said. Granger has not been charged in New Jersey.

All five remain jailed in Texas, where they were arrested between Dec. 7 and Dec. 11. Efforts to reach attorneys for them were unsuccessful.

Addicted To Trouble

Antoinette Broussard once considered Chaka Castro a sister. No blood ties bound them. But as young women just out of their teens in Houston, the two were together so often and enjoyed each other’s company so much, they knew the bond would last, Broussard said.

Castro, a New York native of Colombian descent, was loyal and funny, with a natural charisma that attracted people, Broussard said. She was also smart. Fluent in Spanish and capable of holding a basic conversation in French, Castro sometimes helped Broussard with her college homework, though it was never clear to Broussard that her friend had even finished high school.

Chaka Castro in an undated Facebook photo

“I always enjoyed her company,” said Broussard, 42, who still lives in Houston. “She was fun to be with. She was dependable. Back in my younger days, when I was between jobs, she would help me out.”

For a time, Castro held down jobs, working retail and at a tax-preparation service, Broussard said. But Castro had a tendency to gravitate toward trouble, the friend said. There were arrests for receiving stolen property, counterfeiting and theft, public records show.

She used so many aliases — Chaka Ingram, Michelle Coco Castro, Chaka Marcina and Chaka Lachar Castro, among others — that Broussard and other friends joked among themselves about what to call her.

Broussard disapproved but tried not to judge. Castro had grown up without a father, and a brother had been shot to death, the friend said. She was also struggling to raise her own five children, the youngest now 7, along with her brother’s boy and another child she had taken in, Broussard said.

As the arrests mounted, Broussard distanced herself from Castro, maintaining contact through occasional phone calls or Facebook. She stopped asking Castro how she made money. She didn’t want to know the answer.

“Hustling, I believe, is like gambling,” Broussard said. “It’s just in some people, and they don’t know how to turn it off — the adrenaline of it. She tries to help her family, but it just turns out all kinds of wrong.”

The Suspects

Authorities have yet to say who came up with the home-invasion plot, but they said Castro directed it, recruiting friends and other contacts to carry it out.

“She’s networked into some of the local street guys,” said Bradshaw, the Georgia detective, who has spoken with investigators in Texas and Michigan.

In Allen, Texas, where two home invasions took place in early December, police Sgt. Jon Felty called Castro the operation’s “manager.”

“She was the one who determined what city, how to operate,” Felty said.

Juan Fernando Olaya, left, and Rodney Ray Granger are two of the suspects in a national home-invasion operation, authorities say.

Olaya, the Colombian national, served as the muscle, authorities said. Standing 6 feet tall and weighing 280 pounds, according to prison records, he cut an imposing figure. Over the years, he’d racked up at least a half dozen arrests, mostly on drug counts, the records show.

According to a report last week in the Dallas Morning News, Olaya had twice been deported, in 2006 and 2010, after criminal offenses. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has again placed a hold on him for eventual deportation, the newspaper reported.

A close friend of Johnisha Williams, the aspiring model, provided an inside view of the suspects’ connections, saying Olaya and Castro were in a casual relationship and that Olaya helped with recruitment. The friend spoke on the condition that his name be withheld, saying he did not want to upset Williams’ family.

Olaya, who typically used his middle name, Fernando, was a sort of criminal mentor to Octavius Scott, who went by the name Tay, the friend said.

“Tay was telling us all about how Fernando had just got out (of jail), and how they were all going to get rich, and did anybody want to go with him, and how Fernando was trying to build a team,” the friend said. “It’s kind of like he looked up to Fernando.”

Scott — who is Johnisha Williams’ cousin, family members confirmed — in turn tried to recruit Williams, the friend said.

To Scott's wife, the man charged in the plot is not the same man she married in 2012.

"He's this happy, playful guy," said the wife, who would provide only her first name, Kena. "I just don't understand it."

NJ Advance Media confirmed the woman’s identity through marriage and address records.

Interviewed outside the home they once shared in a fading east Houston neighborhood, the wife said Scott enlisted in the U.S Army after the two met in 2010 and that he later served a tour of duty in Afghanistan. His service could not immediately be confirmed with military officials.

Johnisha Williams, 19, was hoping to become a professional model, friends said. She is seen her in a Facebook photo.

Of all the suspects, Williams appears the most unlikely. Though she dropped out of high school and worked for a time as a stripper, the friend said, she more recently found a part-time job at a Houston firm, H&P Consulting, that provides tax advice and real estate services.

The owner, Robin Hardy, called Williams a sweet and bubbly teenager, “not anyone capable of masterminding this kind of crime.”

Williams, who does not have a criminal record, also had been signed by a local modeling agency in Port Arthur, Texas, near the Louisiana border, and did occasional shoots, the close friend said.

One of seven children in a tight-knit family, Williams had grown somewhat distant in recent years, moving from the city’s north side to the south and not keeping in touch as often, said an older sister, Anna Allegria. Now, Allegria said, she feels guilty that she wasn’t more involved in her sister’s life.

“I think everyone in the family is just wondering if our distance from Jonisha is what allowed her to get herself in this situation,” she said.

High-Tech Scheme

They carried lists of addresses.

The people who forced their way into homes — terrifying residents, binding them, sometimes beating them — knew exactly who they were targeting, authorities said. One list recovered in Allen, Texas, contained 29 addresses, police there said.

Chaka Castro, investigators said, found them on the internet.

Bradshaw, the Georgia detective, said Castro had a background in online research and access to financial databases, likely through an old employer.

“We believe she was a loan officer at one point,” he said. “Maybe she has her old log-ins.”

Bradshaw said he didn’t have more detail on the databases.

Johnisha Williams’ close friend said Scott, Williams’ cousin, mentioned the software in laying out how the plan would work.

“Chaka had some computer program at her house where she could see how much money they make, and that’s how they target people,” the friend said. “The way they tell it, they can tell how much money people have. … They know what kind of insurance they have. What kind of car they drive.”

Authorities say Castro intentionally targeted Asians or Asian-Indians. In nearly every home invasion, the victims were members of those ethnic groups.

Chaka Castro, police allege, used financial databases to find targets for a national home-invasion ring. She is seen here in a Facebook photo.

“Their theory is that Asians and Indians don’t trust financial institutions in America, so they’re more apt to keep money and gold on hand,” Bradshaw said.

Felty, the Allen, Texas, sergeant, said the group likely also operated under the belief that those ethnic groups are less likely to resist in the face of force.

Once homes were selected, Bradshaw said, Castro passed off the lists, either on paper or delivered by text message.

Authorities are continuing to investigate whether the suspects flew or drove to far-flung destinations. Felty said it might have been a combination of the two.

The Milton, Ga., home invasion is the earliest tied to the group by law enforcement. On Aug. 18, Bradshaw said, three men with bandannas over their faces climbed through the open back window of a house, bound the female homeowner with duct tape and picked through the residence for more than an hour.

He said they escaped with some $13,000 in cash, jewelry and electronics.

Two more homes were hit that week, one in Fayette, the other in Paulding County. All three communities are suburbs of Atlanta. Bradshaw said cell phone records indicate the group was involved in those home invasions as well.

In October, authorities said, the group traveled to New Jersey, first striking in Old Bridge on Oct. 20. One day earlier, Williams checked in on Facebook, indicating she was at Venetian Beach on Long Island.

According to the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office, the group struck again in Old Bridge Oct. 26, in South Plainfield Oct. 28 and in Edison Oct. 30, stoking fear in the community and leading to a heated meeting between Edison residents and police at the municipal building.

After returning to Texas, Scott bragged about the trip and the spoils, Williams’ friend said.

“He would just come back and talk about, ‘I ran up in this house, and I got this and I got that. And this dude tried to get live, and I taped this dude up and stuff like that,’” the friend said. “It was like he was really proud of it.”

He said Scott also told him he tied up a woman in New Jersey in her kitchen, facing her silver refrigerator.

“She’s a shorter lady, and she got hit with a pistol,” the friend said. “I’m in Houston. I shouldn’t know that. That’s how much Tay talked about it.”

Octavius Scott, 22, allegedly bragged about the spoils of home invasions, according to his cousin's friend.

Between Nov. 24 and Nov. 26, four home invasions took place in the Michigan communities of Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor Township, Ypsilanti and Canton. Castro and the other Houston residents are expected to be charged in the attacks, authorities have said.

The final New Jersey home invasion took place Nov. 29, again in Old Bridge.

Four more followed in suburban Dallas earlier this month.

In some cases, authorities said, the suspects brought cameras, laptops and other small electronics back with them. In other cases, they allegedly sold them locally to pawn shops and other contacts, a contention backed by Williams’ friend.

“Tay would come back and talk, and he’d be like, ‘We have legit connections out there. Like, we have a legit pawn shop or a lady that bought all the jewelry,” the friend said. “So when they came out here, all they had was money.”

Piecing It Together

Bradshaw was stuck. The Georgia detective's case was growing cold.

And then he received a gift.

A camera that had been stolen during the Milton home invasion had been pawned in Houston. The man who pawned it: Octavius Scott.

Bradshaw quickly obtained an arrest warrant, asking the U.S. Marshals Service for help in tracking Scott down.

Meanwhile, a detective in Michigan wondered if the home invasions there were isolated, searching online for other cases involving Asian-Indians, Bradshaw said. Google pointed him to New Jersey, where investigators from Middlesex County had obtained a crucial piece of evidence.

Carey, the Middlesex County prosecutor, would not go into detail about the case, citing the defendants’ right to a fair trial. Bradshaw said a detective — he did not know from which agency — looked into cell phone data, finding a common number in use at the locations and times of the New Jersey home invasions.

That detective, Bradshaw said, gave the number to the Michigan investigator, who ran it through a car rental database. The number had been given during a rental the week of the home invasions there.

The renter, according to records, was Octavius Scott.

In short order, the Michigan detective discovered the arrest warrant for Scott. Soon he was on the phone with Bradshaw. Authorities now suspected Scott of carrying out home invasions in three states.

“Five minutes after I get off the phone with him, the Dallas area calls me and tells me they’ve been hit and have a few people in custody,” Bradshaw said.

The common denominator: Octavius Scott.

It was in Flower Mound, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, where one of the attacks went awry on Dec. 7. A female victim managed to call 911 as the attackers forced their way in, police said.

Responding officers saw a maroon 2014 Ford Fusion in the area and decided to check it out. Johnisha Williams was behind the wheel. Inside the car, registered to Scott, they found jewelry stolen from South Lake, Texas, a town about 20 minutes south, Capt. Richard Brooks said.

The other suspects — Olaya, Scott and Granger — emerged from the Flower Mound home to find their getaway car gone, police said.

“The other three, they’re saying, ‘Oh my God, Johnisha’s not here to pick us up,’” said Felty, the sergeant from Allen, Texas.

The trio, authorities said, carjacked a Nissan Versa and traveled into the nearby town of Carrollton, where police pulled them over. Granger and Scott ran, police said. Olaya, his ankle sprained during the initial sprint in Flower Mound, didn’t try to escape, Carrollton police spokeswoman Jolene DeVito said.

“He didn’t try to run because he knew he couldn’t,” DeVito said.

Hours later, officers spotted Granger on a stolen bicycle. He was arrested a short time later, after emerging from a storage shed.

Scott escaped the police cordon. The Marshals Service tracked him down four days later at his mother’s home in the Houston area.

The end for Castro came in a home in Carrollton early on Dec. 8. She’d been temporarily staying there, police said, adding that the homeowner was not involved in the scheme.

After serving a search warrant, officers found stolen laptops and other property under the bed in her room, Felty said. Castro, he said, tried to fast-talk her way out of it.

“When the stolen property was found in the room that she was staying in, she concocted a story that some strange people she didn’t even know had brought that stuff over,” Felty said. “She was just holding it for them.”

The investigation continues. Bradshaw, the detective in Georgia, said authorities are now looking into whether Castro was involved in a series of home invasions targeting Asians and Asian-Indians in the Atlanta area in 2011.

It’s also possible other, unidentified suspects took part in the recent crimes, police said.

For now, Felty said, Castro and her friends aren’t talking. It remains unclear when and if they will be extradited to New Jersey.

For Felty, the arrests have brought a certain amount of satisfaction.

“You’ve got people that are holding children at gunpoint,” he said. “That gives you a motivation. You’re going to move. You’re going to do whatever it takes. And that’s what happened here.”

Staff writer Brian Amaral and staff researcher Vinessa Erminio contributed to this report.

Mark Mueller may be reached at mmueller@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MarkJMueller. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

Vernal Coleman can be reached at vcoleman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @vernalcoleman. Find NJ.com on Facebook.