Ring of Train Robbers Derailed, N.J. Officials Say

In a case recalling the late-1800s exploits of Jesse James, police have broken up a gang of train robbers who named themselves the Conrail Boyz and stole millions of dollars in merchandise, New Jersey prosecutors said Thursday.

During the last 11 years, authorities said, ring members took expensive designer clothing, cigarettes and electronics, including 17,496 Sony Playstation game consoles worth approximately $5 million.

The robbers used walkie-talkies, infrared binoculars and radios to monitor police frequencies when they committed the railway raids, authorities said.

Police arrested 13 people Thursday and were hunting for 11 others, including Edward Mongon, 28, of Union City, N.J., the alleged ringleader.

Gang members climbed aboard slow-moving freight trains, broke into cargo containers with bolt cutters and threw the merchandise down to waiting accomplices, the indictment filed in Superior Court in New Jersey charged.

Ring members then sold the property and used some of the money to plan and execute other robberies, court papers said.

Peter C. Harvey, New Jersey’s attorney general, said a two-year investigation “uncovered and identified a sophisticated organized criminal cartel whose sole business was stealing merchandise from freight trains and shipping centers transporting consumer goods.”

He said the robberies took place in the northern and central parts part of the Garden State as the trains moved through a “vast network of tracks and rail yards.”

Court papers alleged that Mongon, as the gang’s leader, developed information about the location and schedule of trains, where the trains could be intercepted, decided who would take part in the raids, and controlled the places where the goods would be stashed.

He would then meet with fences to negotiate the sale of the merchandise and pay members of the gang.

The indictment alleged that from 1992 through March of this year, the Conrail Boyz committed hundreds of thefts totaling millions of dollars -- including stealing numerous tractor-trailers used to haul away the merchandise.

Gang members also took Conrail cargo vans in an effort to avoid detection.

According to the indictment, the gang operated like a corporation with each member assigned a different task.

Investigators said five to 15 people would take part in the train raids. Core members of the enterprise would hire freelance “employees” who sometimes belonged to the Bloods street gang to help in the thefts.

The value of the merchandise taken from the train robberies ranged from $20,000 to hundreds of thousands of dollars, authorities said.

According to the state grand jury indictment, gang members on Dec. 6, 2001, deliberately crashed a car into a vehicle being driven by a police sergeant assigned to the Norfolk and Southern Railroad to avoid pursuit after an attempted robbery.

Detectives are looking into threats of violence against other police officers, prosecutors said.

During the investigation, detectives posed as Korean and Cuban businessmen interested in some of the merchandise. The undercover operatives negotiated the purchase of thousands of dollars worth of clothing, cigarettes and other goods.

Charges against Mongon include burglary, theft, receiving stolen property, fencing goods and money laundering.