I mean, eBay is what foiled it
Unsurprisingly, this still annoys Granims. “We never once got caught at any location, ever,” Granims told me. “I mean, eBay is what foiled it.” Nevertheless, Granims and Ornelas offered significant cooperation with the ensuing investigation and were rewarded with short prison sentences; Ornelas even agreed to wear a wire for the FBI to get Serrano to incriminate himself on tape. In the end, Collins and Serrano spent more time behind bars than Granims and Ornelas did. Both ringleaders were free by the end of 2003, their prison stays a mere blink of an eye—and expected to put their crimes behind them. In 2015, Mike Crowley was becoming convinced that Michael Ornelas was behind the new, multiyear spree of elaborate jewelry-store heists consuming Florida. The drill-work was clearly professional, the crew’s method of entry identical to those heists in the ’90s. It had to be at least some of the same guys, Crowley thought, slicing their way through Florida strip malls, drilling open safes in...