Charles Gross was that rare auto mechanic who knew his job and did it expertly. Unfortunately for his clients, that also made him an expert thief.
Consider this ruse: Last year, he landed a job repairing foreign luxury cars for a prestigious Chicago car dealer.
One afternoon, Gross took a Jaguar XJ6 he had repaired for a test drive. On the way back to the dealership, he made a quick stop at a hardware store, where he had the keys duplicated.
He jotted down the owner`s name and address, which he found in the glove compartment. Later, he had a crew of car thieves drop by the owner`s house to pick up the car.
A breeze, relatively speaking. The personable 43-year-old hustler, who once taught auto mechanics in a vocational school, frequently went to much greater lengths to steal expensive cars.
Gross is now in prison at one of the few minimum-security facilities that no longer has an auto shop, officials for the Illinois Department of Corrections said. During earlier prison terms, he put his skills to work repairing cars and other machinery.
Last month, in exchange for a 10-year prison term, he pleaded guilty to charges that he possessed stolen cars. He was arrested in 1990 along with his partner, Alan Kaye, 42, after he and Kaye tried to sell the aforementioned Jaguar to a man for $23,500.
Gross` story reflects the high end of the fast-growing business of auto theft, as well as the vulnerability of a car owner faced with a brainy criminal. Sophisticated, older than most thieves and a good deal more successful, Gross stood out because of his attention to detail, the market he chose and the skilled work he performed.
Even law enforcement officials developed a grudging respect for him.
”The average criminal does not think ahead,” said Assistant State`s Atty. Jeff Ryan, who prosecuted Gross. ”They`re instant gratification people. Gross knows it takes work to make money. It takes time, money and bother.”
In Illinois, there were 75,642 vehicles stolen last year, according to the Uniform Crime Reporting section of the FBI. Nationally, 1.66 million were stolen in 1991, FBI officials said.
Authorities said most car thieves tend to be younger men who dismantle cars for their parts or who use the cars for joy rides or while committing crimes.
Gross never fit that profile, even when he began his career. First he established himself as a legitimate businessman, opening a repair garage for exotic cars in Highland Park. Soon after, he said, he began supplementing his income with proceeds from car thefts.
In his heyday, during the late 1970s and 1980s, Gross became a recycler of sorts. He bought wrecked exotic car bodies from auto salvage yards and took parts and the vehicle identification numbers (VINs) from those cars and mounted them onto cars he had stolen.
He then sold the stolen cars using the titles that had come with the salvage vehicles as ”repaired wrecked autos” for a substantial profit over what he had paid for the salvage car.
Back then, salvage laws were less stringent than they are now.
”All the chop shops then were dealing with domestic cars-Cadillacs, Lincolns, Chevrolet Monte Carlos and Camaros,” Gross said in an interview at Cook County Jail before he was sentenced. ”There was a whole market that was untapped. I went into the foreign market.”
Before stealing a car or having it stolen, he said, he did his research.
He wrote down the car`s license plate number and VIN and paid a friend with access to police computers to tell him the owner`s name, address and the car`s accident history, he said.
He then would show up at the service section of an auto dealer generally close to closing time posing as the owner and saying he had misplaced his car keys. He asked them to leave a master key with the cashier so he could pick it up on his return later in the day.
The cashiers seldom asked for identification, he said.
It was easiest to steal cars when he had the keys, but he also could use a screwdriver, a dent puller, or other implements to take a fine car.
When he was at his busiest, he said, he had stolen cars and salvage cars stored in 20 rented garages spread over the North Side.
Gross` cars would withstand superficial scrutiny of police if the car`s owner was stopped for a traffic ticket, Ryan said.
Though vehicle identification numbers are inscribed on various car parts, the most accessible are on the windshield and doorframe, which Gross switched with those from the wrecked autos. The police would be likely to check those first.
Only if they compared all the VINS would it be apparent that the car had been stolen.
There always were buyers for his cars or even parts of cars, Gross said.
”There are plenty of guys who want to repair a car legitimately, but not too legitimately,” Gross said. ”They`re willing to pay $2,500 for a front end rather than $7,000 or $8,000, and they don`t take a receipt or ask questions. Everybody wants to save a few dollars.”
His ability to make money on a small investment was keen.
Once, he said, a prop man for a movie told Gross he needed a white Mercedes Benz SL for a scene being filmed on the North Shore. The back of the car, which was the only part of the car that would be visible, had to be in perfect shape.
The car was to be wedged under an oil tanker and blown up during a scene, he said.
Gross said he bought a salvage Mercedes SL that had a damaged front end for $2,500 and painted it white.
He sold the engine and transmission from the car for $1,500, the interior of the car for an additional $1,000 and the hard top of the car for $500. He then rented what was left to the film company for $4,500 for one day.
They set the car on fire and filmed the scene and Gross retrieved the salvage. When he had another Mercedes ”tagged” or stolen, he switched the VINS that earlier had been on the salvage car to the stolen car and sold the stolen car for $15,000, he said. He then sold the front and rear suspension from the burned car for $1,500.
”The whole deal took 30 days,” he said, smiling.
His motive was simple.
”It was all money,” Gross said. ”It wasn`t the excitement. The biggest thrill was cashing the check.”
”I`ve lowered my standard of living quite a bit,” Gross added, toying with a yarmulke he had been wearing.
In 1978, he said, law officers found the back end of a stolen Mercedes in the garage of his repair business in Northbrook. Gross, who by then was stealing cars in other states, had sold the front end. He was charged with possession of a stolen car. He got probation.
He later began working in a Lake County salvage yard, making contacts, saving money and ”doing” an occasional car, he said.
But salvage laws were changing. Titles had to be stamped ”rebuilt,”
driving down the cost of a car. And today, he said, his scheme would be very difficult because salvage titles have to be inspected by the Secretary of State`s Office.
So he tried another tactic. In 1983, he opened Exotic Coachwerks, on Chicago`s North Side, a dealership for used exotic cars. He used money he had gotten from a Small Business Assistance grant he qualified for as a minority, namely an ex-convict.
He devised a complicated scheme in which he got lenders to finance cars he imported from Europe. He then changed aspects of the car and refinanced them through a different lender.
Gross said he earned a six-figure income with the refinancing and other ventures so that he didn`t even have to sell the cars in his showroom.
He did anyway, he said, breaking a federal law that prohibits owners from reselling imported vehicles that are declared to be for personal use.
But 1986 was a bad year.
One of his chop shops, at Armitage and Cicero Avenues, was busted. The finance companies had pulled more than $1 million in funds and he had to pay back a substantial sum of money, he said.
So he went back to his beginnings, ”tagging” or stealing a half-dozen cars every 90 days, alone or with a crew, he said.
In addition to his garages on the North Side, he also stored cars in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas, he said. He also had more troubles with the law. He pleaded guilty in 1987 to 56 counts of possessing stolen cars and served 36 months in prison. It was at a Passover Seder in the Vandalia Correctional Center that Gross met Kaye, 42, his last business partner.
Kaye, a ticket broker, was a former Cook County sheriff`s deputy who had been convicted in criminal court of bribery charges stemming from an Operation Greylord investigation.
When both were paroled from Vandalia, Gross got Kaye a Mercedes to use for his ticket business. Occasionally, they worked together selling hot cars, Ryan said.
They were arrested in December 1990 in the parking lot of a West suburban bank as they waited for a man to come and purchase the Jaguar XJ6.
When they were arrested, Kaye fingered Gross as the source of the cars. Gross promised to help police catch others in the business, but he skipped bond and fled to Europe and later to Central America.
Gross returned to the states to get some seed money to start tourist businesses in Central America, but he was arrested in Texas, he said.
Gross testified against Kaye in Kaye`s bench trial. Kaye was convicted of possessing stolen autos and is awaiting sentencing.
During the year that he spent in jail awaiting trial, Gross worked weekdays repairing jail machinery.
He fixed floor sweepers, scooters, lawn equipment, washers and dryers, diesel equipment and whatever else fell apart, according to his supervisor, a deputy sheriff who did not want to be named.
”There is not anything here he can`t fix, be it electrical or a gas motor,” his supervisor said.
Said Gross: ”I could`ve done well legitimately, but I chose a different way to make my money. Straight jobs-they`re boring. But this (incarceration)
is more boring.”
