Balkan Gang Suspected of Burglaries : Crime: Police say the group has victimized more than 200 grocery stores from Vermont to Virginia, taking about $4 million. No political motive is apparent.

Stan Steppa thought it was just a false alarm when a security system at his grocery store was triggered early one recent Sunday.

By morning, the damage was done.

Police said Steppa had become the latest victim of a New York-based gang from the Balkans that has burglarized more than 200 grocery stores from Vermont to Virginia of an estimated $4 million.

“Damn if they didn’t do a number on me,” said Steppa, owner of Magruder’s supermarkets. “It’s the most unbelievable thing. They are so organized you wouldn’t believe it.”

Hours before the burglary at Steppa’s Annapolis store, the gang hit one of his stores in Fairfax City, Va., 50 miles away. Steppa estimated his total losses could reach nearly $60,000.

Police believe the gang deliberately tripped the alarm in the Annapolis store shortly before 2 a.m. on May 9. After authorities came by to check and dismissed the alert as a false alarm, the gang began its raid.

The burglars tore a hole in the roof to gain access and pried open a safe with sledgehammers and chisels. They left 2 1/2 hours later, leaving behind tools and gloves, as well as customer checks that could be traced.

“That’s their M.O. (method of operation). It’s invariable,” said Detective John Ceprini of the Nassau County, N.Y., police burglary squad. He’s been following the gang’s activities since 1990.

Police came across several similar burglaries in Nassau County diners that year in which the safes were carried away. Eventually, several men who illegally entered the country from Albania and the former Yugoslavia were arrested.

Six months later, however, the gang was back in operation, this time with grocery stores as its prime target, Ceprini said. Since then, the burglars have hit stores in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Connecticut, Virginia and Vermont, authorities said.

“The jobs are fairly lucrative,” he said. “We’ve had them as low as $1,000 and as high as $175,000.”

Ceprini said there is no evidence of any political motive behind the crimes and, so far, the gang has not injured anyone.

Breaking up the gang, which has at least 75 members, has proven especially difficult, in part because of its structure, Ceprini said.

“The way their hierarchy seems to work, which is very similar to the Russian Mafia, is that each crew operates independently. They answer to no one,” he said.

Even when arrests are made, gang members are only taken off the streets for a short time, Ceprini said. One suspected member, for example, was arrested three times between Jan. 16 and April 11.

Local and state authorities have responded to the gang’s activities by sharing information in hopes of detecting patterns that will help predict when the burglars will strike next.

The FBI has no jurisdiction and has limited its role to monitoring what it considers to be a series of local, nonviolent crimes, an agency spokesman said.

The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co., parent company of Superfresh and A&P;, has been one the hardest hit, said Lt. Bob Scruggs of the Maryland State Police. The gang might be responsible for as many as 10 grocery store break-ins in Maryland since March, he said.

Michael Rourke, a spokesman for the Montvale, N.J.-based company, declined to reveal how much was lost and said the company has made changes in its security systems.

“I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything quite like this,” he said.