VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — The WTKR News 3 Investigative Team recently showed you how Customs and Border Protection works to make sure illegal items are not coming and going from our ports.
They frequently find hidden stolen cars, stolen construction equipment and drugs, among many other things in shipping containers.
With the Port of Virginia being one of the busiest in the country, they have a lot of work on their hands.
Watch previous coverage: Customs and Border Protection finds stolen cars hidden in containers in Hampton Roads
A search warrant in Virginia Beach outlines how a woman got involved in a scheme that led to her serving jail time after construction equipment and a trailer rented in her name were shipped to Florida.
Desperate for money, 37-year-old Wendy Butkowski said she was living in a storage unit and struggling with homelessness when she was approached by two men offering to pay her $2,000.
“That should have been a warning right there, so that should have been red flags… I was naive and I was desperate,” said Butkowski.
She said she was hanging out at a homeless camp when the two men asked everyone there if anyone had a valid ID.
She said she was told that all she had to do was open a bank account with their money, then rent construction equipment from a Home Depot in Virginia Beach in her name.
“We were eating out of dumpsters. So, we needed money,” said Butkowski.
More from News 3 Investigates: Daughter of Newport News woman missing 16 years wants answers
A search warrant outlines how law enforcement used GPS to track down some of the equipment at a shipping corporation in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It states that a Home Depot representative told police, “This is a multi-million-dollar scheme of renting equipment and traveling to shipping yards in Florida.”
“They're preying on anybody that's desperate for money, anybody that is in a hard time,” said Butkowski.
Her case was investigated by Virginia Beach police.
Recently, the WTKR News 3 Investigative Team got a behind-the-scenes look at how Customs and Border Protection search suspicious containers coming and going from our ports.
They showed us all the recent stolen cars they found that were headed to either West Africa or the Middle East to eventually be resold.
“It’s a very lucrative international criminal organization. It’s lucrative to steal a car. The shipping can’t be too much to go over to West Africa. The person in West Africa will pay almost full price or more for the vehicle,” said Customs and Border Protection Area Port Director Mark Laria. “We enforce over 40 different federal agencies that have regulations on whether something can be imported or not. We are the enforcer of that.”
More from News 3 Investigates: Woman abducted from 7-Eleven then sexually assaulted in Virginia Beach, according to court records
They are also catching all kinds of illegal or stolen goods, drugs, weapons and construction equipment, like in the case out of Virginia Beach. Virginia Beach police say Butkowski was the only one arrested. She says it’s had a devastating impact on her life.
“I mean, I lost my storage unit, so I lost everything that I owned again. I went to jail for 30 days. I now have a larceny charge on my record,” said Butkowski.
Home Depot issued a statement that read: “Retail crime, including equipment theft, is an ongoing issue, and it has been on the rise over the last several years for many retailers. We have a multitude of initiatives in place to mitigate it including human and technology resources to make theft more difficult, close partnerships with law enforcement and significant efforts working with federal and state task forces to fight this problem. We don’t comment on specific security measures which would give criminals a roadmap to our practices.”
As for Butkowski, she said the scammers paid her a total of $600 and told her only her credit would be impacted. She definitely regrets her decisions and wants to warn others about this kind of scam.
“I definitely hope people take heed to the warning and they learn through my experience... Don't be naive. People are not honest, trustworthy people out here. They're out for their own,” said Butkowski.
