Busted

A police sting operation and the resulting arrest of six alleged violent armed robbers in early March is related to a raid on two Dale City homes, according to the FBI.

Recently unsealed indictments charge Luis Lopez, Serfido "Juan" Trinidad Perez Florian, Vahelo Alay Escobar, Armando Palma Alonzo, Jose "Rapidito" Martin Ruiz-Cacho, and Edgar Geovani Perez-Sunig with committing violent armed robberies and plotting to commit armed robbery of a bank in Pennsylvania and of a D.C. drug dealer.

The planned robbery of the D.C. drug dealer turned out to be a sting operation by law enforcement. The Washington Post reported that as the six men, described as ruthless and well disciplined, were preparing to hold up a D.C. drug dealer they were suddenly attacked with nonlethal concussion grenades lobbed by D.C. police and were then arrested. The drug dealer, it turns out, was fictitious and part of a week-long sting operation by undercover officers who had infiltrated the gang and given them guns from which the firing pins had been removed.

Aside from the drug dealer robbery, the suspects were also planning a robbery of a Wachovia Bank in Horsham, Pa., also in association with undercover police. The indictment says the men asked the undercover officers for firearms, eight vehicles, bulletproof vests and a female driver.

According to the Washington Post, anonymous sources said the undercover officers joined the suspects in casing the bank in Pennsylvania in early March. During a following conversation, members of the gang discussed taking hostages in the bank if they were trapped by police and said they had to be prepared to shoot them one by one if necessary.

The FBI told InsideNova that the arrests are related to the March 9 raids on two homes in the Birchdale neighborhood in Dale City, which occurred the same day as the culmination of the sting operation and arrests, but they would not comment any further.

During the home raids, SWAT teams, armored vehicles and snipers swarmed the neighborhood and broke into two homes. Families who live in the homes told Dale City Patch that people renting rooms in both houses were taken.

The owner of one of the homes also told Dale City Patch that his whole family, including his 13-year-old daughter, were handcuffed and held for several hours. He said officers told him they were after one man, about 5 feet tall, whom they called "Geovani." The homeowner said he believed this Geovani was the former boyfriend of one of his renters.

At least four of the men arrested are also being charged with other violent armed robberies in Dale City and Falls Church.

During one of those robberies in August 2010-at La Despensa Latina, a Latino grocery store and restaurant in Dale City-armed robbers took at least $32,000. Owner Doris Sorto told Dale City Patch that she was getting ready to close her store when a man walked in, pulled out a gun and held it to her neck. He forced her to the floor and told her in Spanish, "Don't look at my face."

Another robbery they are charged with took place a month later at another Latino grocery store in Dale City, La Azteca Latina, where one of the robbers pointed a handgun with a red laser sight at a child's chest. The store's owner pushed the child behind him and the robber aimed the laser at the owner's head and then chest, demanding money. They took $12,000 from that store.

The gang then allegedly robbed a shop in Falls Church in early February 2011, holding an employee at gunpoint and taking $40,000. Finally was a robbery of a Dollar City Plus store in Dale City, where a man put a gun to an employee's head and they stole $600.

The FBI will still not comment on exactly what is the connection between the home raids in Dale City and the arrests.