Cable Box Scam Exposed After Tinley Park Man Caught Beating Girlfriend on I-80 Shoulder: Cops

A Tinley Park man’s lucrative cable box scam was exposed when a state trooper caught him beating his girlfriend on the shoulder of Interstate 80, police said.

Markius Thomas, 34, was arrested in October on a charge of domestic battery after the police found him in a car with his girlfriend, 46-year-old Connie Purchase of Joliet.

Purchase was bleeding from a cut beneath her left eye and she told a trooper Thomas had hit her, police said. The couple was on the I-80 shoulder near the Center Street exit in Joliet.

Purchase then gave the state police a written statement in which she told them Thomas had cable boxes in the back seat of his Honda Civic and that he “modifies the cable boxes and cable modem(s) to provide free cable and Internet and sells them to other consumers,” according to a complaint for a search warrant filed in Will County court.

Purchase told police she “has been dating Thomas for the last two and a half years,” the complaint said, and that “Thomas works with other people to obtain the cable boxes, but sells them on his own all over the greater Chicago area. Thomas buys a box from the ‘box people’ for about $60 and will sell them for $200-$350. Thomas makes the modifications to the cable box using a soldering gun. Thomas then sells the units using Craigslist.”

At the time, Thomas was living in Oak Forest but had moved to Tinley Park by the time he was arrested earlier this month on felony charges of theft and criminal damage to property in connection with the alleged cable box caper.

Purchase reportedly told the cops that Thomas had stored at least 20 cable boxes in his Oak Forest apartment and was squirreling away even more in the building’s storage area near the laundry room.

“Purchase has stated Thomas has no other source of income and estimates Thomas makes over $100,000 cash in a year,” the complaint said.

Thomas had at least $7,500 on hand, as he posted that much in bail just hours after he was booked into the Will County jail. Both his cable case and the domestic battery case involving Purchase remain pending.

When the police found the bleeding Purchase in Thomas’ car and she snitched on him, she was forbidden by court order from being around her lover. The order stemmed from an incident five months prior at a Crest Hill gas station in which Purchase allegedly rammed her car into her boyfriend’s vehicle. Purchase’s children, ages 9 and 10, were in her car at the time, police said.

Purchase was arrested on charges of child endangerment and felony criminal damage to property. The child endangerment charge was dropped and the criminal damage was reduced to a misdemeanor when she pleaded guilty.

When Purchase appeared in bond court following her May 2014 arrest, the judge ordered she was to “have no contact with Markius Thomas and no unsupervised contact with (her) minor children.”

The state police did not pursue charges against Purchase for having contact with Thomas.