Wethersfield Cigarette Bandit Gets 4 Years

WETHERSFIELD, CT — A man implicated in a 2011 cigarette heist at a Wethersfield warehouse has been ordered to spend four years in prison.

United States Attorney Deirdre Daly on Monday said that Andrew Oreckinto, 52, of Matawan, NJ, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Jeffery Alker Meyer in New Haven. In addition to 48 months of imprisonment, Oreckinto is subject to three years of supervised release. The case dates back six years and two months, when more than 8,000 cartons of cigarettes were stolen from a Wethersfield warehouse.

On Feb. 13, a jury convicted Oreckinto of one count of theft from an interstate shipment.

According to the evidence introduced during the trial, at approximately 7 a.m. on March 20, 2011, Wethersfield Police responded to an open garage door complaint at New Britain Candy, a business and warehouse located at 24 Maple Street in Wethersfield.

The business distributes items to convenience stores in Connecticut and neighboring states.

A glue-like substance had been forced into the front door lock causing it to be inoperable, exterior surveillance camera wires and a phone line had been cut, and alarm panels and speakers had been disabled, according to case documentation.

A total of 8,012 cartons of cigarettes, along with a pallet jack, were missing from the warehouse, accordinmg to case documentation.

The stolen cigarettes had a wholesale value of about $300,000 and a retail value of approximately $500,000, Daly said.

One individual, subsequently identified as Oreckinto, was seen on video surveillance footage, dressed in a black hooded sweatshirt, dark pants, black gloves, a black face mask, and a headband, Daly said.

Prior to the burglary, Oreckinto had stolen a white box truck from a business in Hartford and the day after the Cigarette heist, the truck was found near a commercial construction site in Stamford, Daly said.

The stolen pallet jack was recovered from the cargo area of the truck, Daly said.

An investigation included extensive analysis of prepaid cellphones and cell tower information, Daly said. Examination of the call history of Oreckinto’s prepaid phone ultimately led investigators to several other prepaid phones that had been used in multiple commercial burglaries in Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, Daly said.

Oreckinto previously was convicted of two of those other burglaries, including a burglary that occurred at a Waldbaum’s Supermarket in Rockville Centre, NY, overnight on Dec. 31, 2010 and Jan. 1, 2011, Daly said. He was implicated in commercial warehouse burglary in Florham Park, NJ, on April 28, 2008, during which $100,000 worth of copper was stolen, Daly said.

Oreckinto has been detained since Feb. 24, 2012, when he was arrested for the New Jersey warehouse burglary. He is currently incarcerated in New Jersey with a state sentence that is due to expire in October 2018, Daly said.

Judge Meyer ordered his four-year federal sentence to begin Monday.

At the time of Oreckinto’s arrest for the New Jersey burglary, a search of his car revealed a list of licensed cigarette distributors in the State of Connecticut that had been printed from the Connecticut Department of Revenue Services web site, Daly said. The list, which included the New Britain Candy warehouse in Wethersfield, also contained several handwritten notations next to many of the businesses, at least three of which also had been burglarized, Daly said.

This investigation was conducted by the Wethersfield Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with the assistance of the Nassau County Police Department and the Florham Park Police Department.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock