Audio By Carbonatix
Independent Journalism in Phoenix Needs You
We need to raise $15,000 by August 9 to support the reporting our community depends on. Reader support keeps us independent and is playing a larger role in funding local journalism and shaping what comes next. If you believe independent local journalism matters, make a contribution today.
Scottsdale police arrested a Phoenix man Wednesday after they found more than 1,000 pairs of stolen sunglasses in a storage locker rented in his name.
Gojko Pivac, 33, stole the shades from the Scottsdale warehouse of sunglass designer and distributor Marcolin USA over the course of several months, the cops say.
These weren’t your run-of-the mill $10 shades you find in the check-out aisle of a drugstore; these were designer Tom Ford and Roberto Cavalli specs, some of which cost up to $400 apiece.
Who knows why anyone would pay that much for sunglasses, but Marcolin has sole distribution rights to the designer shades, so selling them to anyone without getting caught presents a serious challenge.
How on Earth do you move 1,000 pairs of rare, stolen sunglasses? The Internet, stupid!
Police say Pivac, a Marcolin employee, was stealing the shades and selling them on ebay. Unfortunately for Pivac, hiding behind a computer screen wasn’t enough to keep the sleuths in the Scottsdale PD’s Computer Crimes Division off his trail.
Police began working with postal inspectors to try to identify the person shipping the sunglasses to whomever was buying them and it led Pivac’s home.
A search of Pivac’s place pointed toward the storage locker, where investigators found the huge stash of pricey shades with an estimated value of about $400,000.
Pivac was arrested and charged felony theft and felony trafficking in stolen property.
