Federal prosecutors sentenced a 29-year-old Bronx man to more than five years in prison on Thursday for leading a criminal enterprise that stole caseloads of beer from railyards and beverage distribution facilities across four Northeastern states and resold the pilfered pilsners.<\/p>\n
\u201cJose Cesari led an armed crew that repeatedly targeted railyards and warehouses, stealing massive quantities of beer and treating it like easy money,\u201d said Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. \u201cHe took part in more than three dozen thefts and recruited others into the scheme.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prosecutors said Cesari led a Bronx-based armed crew that carried out more than three dozen beer heists across Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York between July 2022 and April 2024, pilfering hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of beer.<\/p>\n
During a typical theft, according to prosecutors, Cesari and his team would meet in the Bronx and travel to one of the targeted facilities under cover of night. They would typically travel with at least one U-Haul box truck, prosecutors said, which would be filled with hundreds of cases of stolen beer, primarily Modelo or Corona imported from Mexico. The bilked brews would then be inspected and resold in the Bronx, and each participating crew member would typically be paid hundreds of dollars for the night\u2019s work, authorities said.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors said Cesari would use social media to recruit accomplices and showcase his profits. In one photo posted to Instagram and shared by prosecutors, he\u2019s seen climbing a railcar filled with Corona and holding a yellow angle grinder. In other posts, prosecutors said, he advertised that he could provide police scanners and also promised new recruits \u201c100k in ten days.\u201d Another photo posted by Cesari and shared by prosecutors showed him wearing a Corona T-shirt and included a caption in which he boasted that while some people \u201cgot rich off of corona virus [virus emoji],\u201d he \u201cgot rich off coronas [train emoji].\u201d<\/p>\n