Gunmen Rob Electronics Firm of Computer Chips

Armed robbers broke into an Irvine electronics firm Tuesday night and escaped with an undisclosed amount of computer chips, police said.

The robbery occurred about 8:30 p.m. at Centon Electronics Inc. on Morgan Street, when four or five men wearing masks and hoods entered the building and handcuffed and bound three employees, Irvine Police Lt. Vic Thies said. The men were armed with handguns and shotguns, he said.

The robbers had fled by the time police arrived, Thies said, and the employees were left unharmed.

Thies said the robbery was similar to a rash of thefts in Southern California, particularly Orange County, that have cost companies millions of dollars in computer chips.

Several of the robberies have been carried out in paramilitary style, investigators say. The bandits usually strike late at night and bind and gag their victims, threatening them with death.

Federal and local law enforcement authorities believe several crime rings based in Orange County’s Vietnamese community are responsible for stealing millions of dollars worth of chips and reselling them on the black market.

On Monday, authorities revealed that they had indicted two Orange County men for stealing $3.7 million in computer chips from an AT&T; manufacturing facility in Oklahoma. The chips were transported to Orange County by car and commercial jet and fenced through at least 30 Vietnamese-owned computer stores, officials said.

The microchips, which are used in everything from toasters to computers, are small but valuable. Just a handful can bring several thousand dollars, and most do not carry serial numbers, making them extremely difficult to trace.

Among the local companies that have been hit by theft are Irvine-based computer giant Western Digital Corp., which estimated that it lost $10 million worth of chips in 1989 to thieves. Other victims include:

* Telecomputer Inc. in Westminster, where robbers tied up an employee and stole $100,000 in microchips last March.

* W.G. Holt Inc. in Irvine, where two armed robbers tied up a security guard on Thanksgiving Day, 1989, and stole $150,000 in microchips.

Investigators summoned senior Centon officials to the two-story building Tuesday night in an attempt to ascertain the value of the chips.