“They really ransacked the house badly, the house was a mess,” the family said.
Thieves from other countries are coming to the United States on tourist visas in an attempt to break into luxury homes and rob them, according to authorities. Cops are calling it ‘crime tourism.’
The burglars have been captured on video in several different cases leaving houses with loads of stolen goods. Police believe that some criminal tourists have even disguised themselves as delivery drivers or utility workers to surveil homes in affluent neighborhoods then when the time is right, they break in and leave with what they robbed.
The Weil family caught so called “crime tourists” while they were still browsing the family home. Father Jay and daughter Madison returned to their house in California to be greeted by the not-so-friendly tourists.
“I just remember being just a couple steps outside and looking at the front of my childhood home and seeing these flashlights moving all over my bedroom the guest bedroom,” Madison says.
Surveillance video shows three men making a quick getaway. One man is seen jumping off of the second-story balcony and another sliding down a column.
“They really ransacked the house badly, the house was a mess,” Jay says.
The visiting suspected thieves tried to make an escape, but police caught them after a chase that ended 50 miles away from the home.
All three men are from Chile and were visiting the United States on a tourist visa, according to authorities.
“These are individuals who are working in an organized fashion coming to the United States,” Orange County District Attorney, Todd Spitzer, told Inside Edition. “They want a tourist visa to go to Disney World and they will travel all across the United States committing crimes as they go.”
