Among the 12, eight people have already been arrested and charged with violating the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act when they drained people’s Colorado EBT accounts of funds, according to a Boulder County District Attorney’s Office news release. The Lafayette Police Department took the lead on the investigation — dubbed “” — into the crime ring, according to the release.

One minor was also arrested, according to the release. The eight arrested and three others were indicted on the following charges and remain in custody at the Boulder County Jail, according to online court records.

• Romario Ciuciu, 26, was charged with 34 counts, including COCCA, cybercrimes, theft and identity theft. Ciuciu is being held in jail on a $1 million bail.

• Viorel Isirius Tudor, 29, was charged with 23 counts, including COCCA, cybercrimes, theft and possession of identity theft materials. Tudor is being held on a $1 million bail.

• Ion Ciuciu, 49, was charged with 10 counts, including COCCA, cybercrimes, theft and possession of identity theft materials. Ciuciu is being held at the jail on $500,000 bail.

• Felicia Ciuciu, 48, was charged with 14 counts, including COCCA, cybercrimes, theft, tampering with evidence and possession of identity theft materials. Ciuciu is being held at the jail on $500,000 bail.

• Madalina Velcu, 21, was charged with six counts, including COCCA, tampering with evidence and possession of identity theft materials. Velcu is being held at the jail on $500,000 bail.

• Denisa Barbu, 24, was charged with 21 counts, including COCCA, cybercrimes, theft, tampering with evidence and possession of identity theft materials. Barbu is being held at the jail on $500,000 bail.

• Ana Maria Dumitru, 25, was charged with five counts, including COCCA and possession of identity theft materials. Dumitru is being held on a $250,000 bail.

The group, many of whom were members of two families, is accused of using card-skimming machines on ATMs and cash registers to target people on Colorado EBT, a government food assistance program. Some had their accounts drained, according to the release.

The machines would secretly record card and PIN numbers when people used the machines so the group could clone the cards and access accounts, the release states. The group targeted convenience stores — often 7-Elevens — in Boulder County and surrounding areas, including Westminster, Lakewood, Aurora, Arvada and Denver, according to an indictment.

The DA’s Office said the group operated for less than six months and stole or tried to steal at least $301,400.61 across 447 Colorado EBT cards. Law enforcement seized 236 cloned cards, the release states. Investigators also found devices believed to have been used to make the skimming devices in a search of one of the family’s apartments, according to the indictment.

In December, law enforcement placed a GPS tracking device on a vehicle that had been seen on surveillance footage at some of the convenience stores where card thefts had been reported. Detectives tracked the vehicle to two 7-Eleven locations in Longmont and later found card-skimming devices had been installed at those locations. Call records also placed members of the group at locations where the devices had been placed and locations where cloned cards were used.

“Once again, a crime ring victimizing people across the Front Range made the mistake of venturing into Lafayette,” District Attorney Michael Dougherty said in a statement. “Over the past few years, the Lafayette Police Department has repeatedly connected seemingly unrelated offenses to major crime operations to bring them to a halt.”

The bronze Works Progress Administration marker was installed near the intersection of West Alameda Avenue and Sheridan Boulevard to commemorate the 5,000 workers who extended Alameda Parkway to Red Rocks Amphitheatre during the Great Depression, according to Alameda Connects, a nonprofit organization focused on supporting the corridor.

The nonprofit’s executive director, Tom Quinn, noticed the plaque was missing from its red sandstone base and reported the apparent theft to Lakewood police on April 10. A theft investigation is underway, police spokesman John Romero said.

The bronze plaque is likely worth less than $50 as scrap metal, said Morgan Smith, a buyer at Rocky Mountain Recycling. It holds significantly more value as a historic artifact, Quinn said in a news release.

“This marker was intended as a permanent record of the New Deal legacy Franklin Roosevelt built and what social programs and public investment can achieve,” he said. “It is a somber reflection that trends indicate it was stripped for scrap by those for whom social safety nets were established to prevent this kind of desperate act.”

Brass is selling at slightly more than $3 a pound right now, Smith said, which is about the regular range, although perhaps slightly elevated because of its copper content, which is selling higher.

“So they’re doing thousands of dollars of damage to collect a few bucks,” Smith said of the potential thief.

He noted that if someone brought in the stolen historical marker or any other suspicious object to Rocky Mountain Recycling, the company would alert police, buy the item and collect the seller’s personal information.

“And usually, 99% of the time (the police) get here before the guy leaves,” he said.

A divided Colorado House approved on a 33-32 vote. The state Senate is expected to adopt changes made in the House and send the measure to Gov. Jared Polis, whose spokesman said he would sign it into law.

The bill would require that farmworkers reach 56 hours of work in a week before they qualify for overtime, an increase of eight hours in the threshold for those workers operating outside of peak harvesting seasons.

In both the House and the Senate, a majority of Democrats opposed the measure. It passed only with the unanimous support of Republican lawmakers, who are outnumbered nearly 2-to-1 in the legislature.

The bill was backed by the agricultural industry, which warned that several pressures — including increased labor costs — were economically squeezing Colorado’s farmers and ranchers. The bill’s supporters argued that farmers and ranchers have cut workers’ hours to limit overtime and that the state has lost some workers to neighboring states.

While few farmworkers testified on the measure during committee hearings, one, Mike Drieth, said he’d been sent home to keep him below the OT threshold.

“We’ve seen historically low commodity pricing; rising operational costs for fuel, fertilizer and equipment; tariffs — and, of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the historically low snowpack that has led to a shortage of water in the San Luis Valley,” said Rep. Matthew Martinez, a Monte Vista Democrat who sponsored the bill with Republican Assistant Minority Leader Ty Winter.

“All this requires pause and a call to evaluate” overtime requirements, Martinez said.

Depending on the season, farmworkers currently have to work 48 or 56 hours to qualify for overtime through rules set up by a 2021 law. Initially, SB-121 would’ve set that threshold at 60 hours across the board, but the bill’s Senate sponsors — Democratic Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez and Republican Minority Leader Cleave Simpson — pared it back to 56 hours. Martinez and Winter added an amendment tightening penalties for agricultural wage theft.

But the bill was still opposed by labor groups and progressive organizations, which backed a separate measure that would have lowered the overtime threshold to 40 hours. That bill died in its first Senate hearing.

Legislative critics of SB-121 argued that the measure sought to help one industry at the cost of its workers, who — they argued — labored in difficult conditions and were vulnerable both to abusive employment practices and to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

“It is true what our farmers are facing. Costs are up, margins are small. There is no argument about that from me,” said Rep. Jennifer Bacon, a Denver Democrat. “… We need to find a world in which those farms can be sustained so that they can offer hours. But when we are faced with this challenge … we should have an opportunity to address it where we do not pit those against each other. Because costs are going up for everybody.

“Whether you are a farmer or a farmworker, milk is the same price.”

The bill hit on a familiar sore spot within the broader Democratic caucus in the legislature: how to balance business interests against protections for workers.

In a similar fight last year, lawmakers debated whether to cut tipped workers’ minimum wages to help shore up the restaurant industry. That bill’s Democratic sponsors eventually stripped the measure of its wage-cutting provisions and punted the decision to local governments.

In a statement, Polis spokesman Eric Maruyama said the governor “strongly supports” SB-121 and intends to sign it.

“This bill will set a reasonable overtime limit for agricultural workers who want to earn more money and more hours without diminishing worker protections, while increasing the fine amounts for agricultural producers who steal wages from their workers,” Maruyama wrote. “This bill is an important step in the right direction for Colorado agriculture and will create a more economically viable future for Colorado farmers and workers alike.”

The bill’s opponents were less effusive.

“It is shameful that 11 House Democrats voted with Republicans to pass what is quite literally injustice and political patronage masquerading as legislation,” Christopher Nurse, the political director for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, said in a statement. “CIRC and other organizations worked tirelessly to put protections for farm workers into law, only for some of the same legislators who voted for those protections to essentially tell migrant farm workers today that their labor is expendable.”

Once it’s signed, SB-121 will take effect Jan. 1.

The statewide grand jury indicted George Gonzalez, 55, on nine charges of insurance fraud and five counts of theft, all felonies, according to court records. The charges stem from several years in which Gonzalez allegedly diverted tens of thousands of dollars in customer payments to himself rather than paying the insurance companies he brokered policies for, according to a .

Gonzalez, the owner of , sold workers’ compensation insurance policies from Pinnacol Assurance to businesses, . When customers paid Amerimex for an insurance policy, they would make a down payment on the total policy amount and finance the remaining balance over the policy term. Those funds were supposed to be paid to Pinnacol, after which the company would pay Gonzalez a commission, the indictment stated.

Pinnacol discovered the fraud after a new customer called to check on his policy, according to the indictment.

“The customer had paid Gonzalez and Amerimex $1,082 for the policy. However, Gonzalez reported via email that the customer only paid $752 and ultimately remitted $754 to Pinnacol,” the indictment stated.

Pinnacol investigators discovered eight policies Gonzalez created between February 2022 and January 2024 in which Gonzalez collected funds but kept some for himself, according to the indictment. The company reported Gonzalez to the in January 2024, after which state investigators discovered an additional eight companies being stolen from, the indictment alleged.

In total, Gonzalez is accused of diverting roughly $97,233 from the nine insurance companies, according to court documents.

“Insurance fraud is a serious crime that affects all consumers,” Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a statement. “Those who attempt to engage in insurance fraud will be held to account.”

Anyone who made payments to Amerimex Insurance between 2023 and 2026 and believes that their payment may have been more than what was paid to their insurance company is asked to contact the Colorado Attorney General’s Office at amerimexinfo@coag.gov.

Vehicle thefts dropped 34% from 2024 to 2025, marking the third year in a row that reported thefts decreased in the state, according to a . Across the country, vehicle thefts fell by an average of 23% during that time.

Last year’s drop also marked a 56% decrease for Colorado auto thefts since 2021, the report stated.

Colorado’s 16,291 car thefts in 2025 ranked 14th in the country for volume, state officials said. The state’s motor vehicle theft rate per capita — 271 per 100,000 residents — was also the sixth worst in the country. That’s down from 2021, when Colorado documented the most vehicle thefts per capita, according to the report.

A sharp spike in thefts landed Colorado at the top of the list of all states for per capita auto thefts in 2021, with just over 500 stolen vehicles per 100,000 residents, according to . Motor vehicle thefts more than doubled in the state between 2019 and 2021, agency officials said.

“As we look to further safeguard our cars and our communities, we need additional commitment from every driver,” Col. Matt Packard, chief of the Colorado State Patrol, said in a statement. “Locking your cars and taking your keys is the bare minimum, but with tools from the — like free steering wheel locks at State Patrol offices, this is the best time to do more to protect our roads and our communities from the dangerous crime of auto theft.”

Hyundai and Kia thefts accounted for roughly 15% of all Colorado thefts in 2025, with a combined total of 2,445 vehicles stolen, according to the report. State officials said the 10 most stolen vehicles of 2025 included the:

• Chevrolet Silverado: 683
• Hyundai Elantra: 621
• Hyundai Sonata: 369
• Ford F-150: 358
• GMC Sierra: 326
• Ford F-250: 311
• Jeep Grand Cherokee: 222
• Honda Civic: 221
• Kia Optima: 216
• Honda Accord: 215

Most of the thefts happened inside metro Denver, including Adams, Arapahoe, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas, Gilpin and Jefferson counties, according to the report. In 2025, the metro area accounted for 69% of all vehicle thefts in Colorado.

The eagle figure–valued at about $1,000—is from the Operation Red Wings memorial, which honors 19 U.S. service members killed in the 2005 Afghanistan mission.

The theft was discovered on Wednesday morning.

The monument is dedicated to Colorado Navy SEAL Danny Dietz and his fallen teammates.

No suspects have been identified, and anyone with information is asked to contact Littleton Police at 303‑794‑1551.

Frayer Contreras-Gafaro, 24, was convicted in December on 11 felony charges, including several counts each of second-degree kidnapping, aggravated robbery and burglary, Arapahoe County court records show. He was sentenced last Monday to 75 years in prison.

The jury acquitted Contreras-Gafaro of nine additional charges, including theft in a range of $20,000 to $100,000, felony menacing, third-degree assault, child abuse, false imprisonment and criminal mischief, according to court records.

Contreras-Gafaro and another man, who officials did not identify, pulled out guns inside an Aurora apartment in the 1300 block of North Laredo Street on June 12, 2024, according to a .

The men had reached out to the apartment resident, a 33-year-old woman, on Facebook after she listed jewelry on the social media platform, the news release stated.

“The victim’s two children were inside the apartment at the time and were ordered into a nearby room,” prosecutors stated in the release. The children were told that she would be killed if they screamed, the woman told police, according to the release.

The men stole dozens of jewelry pieces, valued at approximately $20,000, according to the DA’s office.

Contreras-Gafaro blocked the victim on Facebook after the incident, but she was able to use her husband’s account to find the man, officials said in the release.

“This decades-long sentence ensures this defendant will no longer have the opportunity to terrorize another family,” Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney Johnny Lombardi said in a statement. “This was a calculated and violent crime carried out inside a home where a mother and her children should have felt safe. We hope this sentence brings the victim and her family a sense of justice and closure.”

The 24-year-old man will not be eligible for parole until he’s 84, according to the DA’s office.

The statues, which depicted Saints Rita and Paul, were stolen from the front of the church by a man on a skateboard just before 4 a.m. on March 4, according to the Catholic parish’s website.

The two statues have graced the facade of the church for more than 100 years, since Holy Ghost Church opened as a basement church in 1924.

“It leaves a literal hole in the wall and in your heart,” Nguyen said. “It’s been very hard for the community wrestling with it.”

Denver police found the statues on Wednesday. An investigation into the theft is ongoing and no one has been arrested as of Friday, the Denver Police Department said.

The rediscovered statues were cut up and ready to be sold for their metal value, Nguyen said.

The church has found artisans who can fix the statues, but it is going to cost about $4,000, he said.

“We’re kind of hoping police go ahead and make the arrest that is relevant to that case and see where it goes,” Nguyen said. “It would be nice not to have to use our rainy day fund for something like this since it’s vandalism and there is a responsible party.”

Holy Ghost Church, 1900 California St., has about 2,000 registered parishioners.

If a majority of the council approves the not-yet-finished contract, it will replace the city’s current system with the controversial company Flock Safety. The city’s final contract with Flock expires this month, and its cameras are then set to be decommissioned.

The would be for a year and would include the installation of 50 license plate-reading cameras in public intersections in the city. They would snap photos of passing cars to capture their license plates and any identifiable features — such as a scratch or a dent — and use that data to help investigate crimes like car thefts, hit-and-runs, kidnappings and homicides. Currently, the city has 111 Flock-operated cameras doing that work.

The meeting marked a lowering of the temperature for discussions around the city’s license plate-reader system. Council members and hundreds of Denver residents have criticized Mayor Mike Johnston’s office in recent months after his administration repeatedly extended the city’s contract with Flock last year without council approval.

“It took a very long time to get this level of responsiveness, and I’m glad that we’re getting it — but I’m not feeling like any of this would have happened if we had not had a huge amount of accountability from the public,” said Councilwoman Sarah Parady, one of the most vocal critics of Flock, during the meeting.

Tim Hoffman, the director of policy for the mayor’s office, asked the council’s to delay a vote until its meeting next week so that the city could have more time to complete the contract¶¶Ňőap details.

Multiple council members said they would withhold their support for the new agreement until they had a chance to see the details in that contract. Parady said she saw some improvements between the two companies but still had some concerns.

Council members on the committee asked for more details, including about potential audits of the system’s usage, the data retention policy and the potential to share data with other agencies in the future.

Flock has been under heightened scrutiny nationwide after reports showed that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have used Flock’s database to aid in President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation campaign. ICE agents were  in 2024 and 2025 before the city asked to be removed from Flock’s national database last April.

While some elements of the new system would be similar to Flock’s, it will have significant differences, city officials have said, particularly around some of the most-scrutinized elements of the systems.

The city plans to set the data retention period for Axon’s cameras to only 21 days, nine days shorter than it was for Flock. Axon doesn’t have a national database for other law enforcement agencies to participate in, like Flock did. Denver’s system also will be cut off from all other law enforcement agencies, and its overseers will create an invite-only sharing system with nearby law enforcement agencies that agree to abide by certain rules.

The mayor’s office decided to bring the contract through the council process, despite its value being below the $500,000 threshold that requires council approval, in an effort to be more collaborative, Johnston said in February.

The committee is now set on March 18 to consider advancing the finalized contract to the full council.

But unlike an initial version of the law that was made public in December, the county will levy no fines on retailers for failing to do so — instead leaving any decision about punishment to a local court.

The called for fines of $50, and all the way up to $1,000, for businesses that failed to report a crime. That caused some unease in the business community that Douglas County was overreaching.

Commissioner Abe Laydon said during the business meeting Tuesday that the ordinance was not meant to punish retailers but to keep the community safe.

“This is the most prosperous county in the state of Colorado — we don’t want us to become a target for organized crime,” he said. “When we tolerate organized retail theft, we normalize lawlessness.”

The increased the time — from 24 hours to 96 hours — that businesses will have to report a theft. It also allows a retailer to report a crime via an online form rather than have police called to the scene.

That was enough to allay concerns from Chris Howes, the president of the Colorado Retail Council. In an attempt to make the measure more palatable to local businesses, he said his organization had some “fruitful discussions” with the county after the law was first unveiled.

“We don’t feel it punishes retail,” he said. “The focus on retail crime is overall going to be a benefit to us.”

District Attorney George Brauchler said he wants to get the message across that “we do not tolerate thieves.”

“If you come here to steal from us, plan on staying,” he said in a statement Tuesday. “Business owners and citizens alike should know that we will continue to protect their property rights.”

Douglas County Sheriff Darren Weekly said the ordinance is aimed at combating the recent trend of retail outlets, especially large ones, . The measure holds employers accountable for policies that discourage the reporting of theft and that might result in retaliation against an employee who does report a crime.

“When corporate policies prevent or discourage the reporting of theft, it limits our ability to investigate, identify patterns and hold offenders accountable,” Weekly said in a statement. “(This ordinance) reinforces the importance of timely reporting and evidence preservation while focusing on corporate entities rather than individual employees.”

The new measure takes effect April 4.