KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Two Texas men were indicted this week by a federal grand jury in Kansas for their alleged participation in a conspiracy to sell stolen Garmin watches.
Gerald Ditz, 31, and Michael Alaniz, 35, both of El Paso, Texas, are charged with conspiracy to transport stolen property, interstate transportation of stolen property, mail and wire fraud conspiracy, and mail fraud.
According to court documents filed in support of the charges, Ditz and Alaniz were both employed at ConGlobal, a freight contracting company doing work at Union Pacific Railroad’s Santa Teresa yard in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, near El-Paso.
The conspiracy started with the transportation of a Garmin shipping container that left Taiwan on a cargo ship on March 24, 2023. The ship carrying the container arrived in California several weeks later on May 17, 2023.
The container with the Garmin merchandise was loaded onto a Union Pacific train bound for the Santa Teresa facility.
When the shipping container eventually arrived on May 25, 2023, at Garmin’s warehouse in Olathe, more than 1,500 electronic devices were missing.
By the end of May, federal investigators said the stolen items started to appear for sale on eBay.
The break in the case came nearly a year later in May 2024 when one of the stolen items was mailed to the FBI in Manhattan, Kansas.
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