By Khalida Sarwari
Santa Clara County sheriff’s investigators are asking residents to help identify property recovered from the home of a man they believe burglarized a cell phone repair shop in Saratoga a few months ago.
The commercial burglary occurred around 5 a.m. on April 24 at Cell Phone Repair, 18562 Prospect Road. A number of electronic items were stolen from the business, including an Apple iMac that investigators used to track down the suspect–identified as 36-year-old Ryan Paradiso–at his home in the 2300 block of Lincoln Avenue in San Jose.
The iMac belongs to an employee at Cell Phone Repair who declined to give his name. It was a personal computer he said he kept at work and on which he had left some of his accounts open, including his email, Netflix and Amazon. Weeks later, he said he came home one day and found a box containing a $400 police scanner that appeared to have been ordered off of Amazon.
“I knew it wasn’t mine, unless I was really drunk,” the employee said. Around the same time, he said he noticed someone was watching “random scary and black comedy” movies using his Netflix account. He called police and told them about these activities.
Using the tracking number for the scanner, investigators were able to trace the IP address to the Lincoln Avenue residence. When deputies went to the home on June 17 to conduct a probation search, they saw Paradiso attempting to flee out the front window. They eventually detained him and searched his residence, during which a “treasure trove” of stolen items were located, according to Sgt. Kurtis Stenderup, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office. Along with the Apple iMac computer, they found a stolen handgun, several computer monitors, cell phones, jewelry, bikes, silver dinnerware and a photo album.
As the deputies were searching Paradiso’s garage, several neighbors noticed various items that had been stolen from their homes, according to the sheriff’s office. Those items were recovered and returned to their owners. What helped, Stenderup said, was that many of the neighbors had reported their stolen items to authorities.
“The message to come out of this is that if you are a victim of a crime, it’s so important to report it to the police,” Stenderup said. “We have to have some validation.”
He advised residents to always maintain some kind of digital evidence of their property.
Paradiso is being held without bail at the Santa Clara County Main Jail. He has been charged with one count of buying, receiving, concealing or withholding stolen property, according to Cynthia Sumida, acting spokeswoman for the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office. He is scheduled to enter a plea to the charge on Aug. 6.
The Cell Phone Repair employee said he learned about the burglary from his boss, who called him that morning because he lives closest to the store. When he arrived around 8 a.m., he noticed many of the items that were “laying around” the store–such as cell phones, computers, iPads and laptops–were gone.
“Luckily, he didn’t take any of our parts,” he said. “[But] he probably made a lot of money off of the stuff we had here.”
Stenderup estimated that more than $1,000 worth of items were stolen from Cell Phone Repair, but the employee said it’s closer to $4,000. He said he was happy to get his iMac back because it holds sentimental value to him.
While the burglary was “a huge setback,” the employee said they were able to bounce back and go about business as usual. It was the first such incident in Cell Phone Repair’s nearly two-year history.
Investigators are asking for the public’s help in identifying some of the property that was recovered from Paradiso’s home. Anyone that recognizes any of the items is asked to call Det. Sgt. Bryan Glatz at 408.868.6600 or bryan.glatz@sheriff.sccgov.org.
“The more people that could say, ‘Hey this is my item,’ then we can start working backwards and start tracing them and hopefully put more charges on this person and return the items to their rightful owners,” Stenderup said.
Sheriff’s department nabs suspect in cell phone story burglary
