Police arrest suspected Enchanted Hills copper thieves

Turquoise Desert Taproom loses 'close to $10,000' due to copper theft

RIO RANCHO — Sometime during the night of Jan. 3, copper was stolen from a transformer in a …

RIO RANCHO — After businesses lost thousands of dollars from an outage caused by copper wire theft from a PNM box last month, two men were arrested for the incident.

Nicolas Scarton, 40, of Albuquerque, and Albert Perea, 43, of Bernalillo, were arrested Feb. 6 for larceny and criminal damage to property tied to the incident.

Last month, officers followed up on the theft report after Scarton was arrested for other charges but was found with a large amount of copper wiring in his car. They also found bolt cutters in the car. After cellphone footage was viewed of the incident, Scarton and Perea were identified as the ones who cut the copper wire.

The damage to the PNM box was estimated to be about $90,000, and several businesses lost thousands of dollars in inventory and lost sales on top of that.

The maximum jail time allowed for larceny above $20,000 is nine years.