Indian and South Asian homes have been targeted in a months-long series of daytime breakins in Northern Virginia by burglars looking for gold that mirror a disturbing trend seen in other parts of the U.S. as well.
"The burglars are discerning. They have taken 22-karat pieces but left behind sterling silver and well-crafted costume jewelry," the Washington Post reported Oct. 17.
"They have sifted through floor-length gowns lovingly stored in closets and plucked every custom-made sari threaded with gold and worth thousands, disdaining saris worth only hundreds," it said.
Officers in Fairfax and Loudoun counties on the outskirts of the national capital of Washington, and the homeowners themselves, have yet to figure out how the burglars so successfully identify houses with large gold caches.
Before they became victims, many of the families were strangers, and they and police have eliminated many of the obvious links: churches, temples, schools or even grocery stores where they could have been tracked, the Post said.
The unsolved crimes mirror a pattern of 93 burglaries in Houston, 37 in central Illinois and a handful outside St. Paul, Minnesota.
"Most of us didn't even know each other," Raman Kumar, whose home in Centreville, another Washington suburb, was among the earliest break-in sites was quoted as saying.
"But here is the thing: If you know our customs, you know we carry a lot of gold."
A break-in Oct. 22was the most recent of three cases in South Riding in Loudoun.
Indian and South Asian homes have been targeted in a months-long series of daytime breakins in Northern Virginia by burglars looking for gold that mirror a disturbing trend seen in other parts of the U.S. as well.
"The burglars are discerning. They have taken 22-karat pieces but left behind sterling silver and well-crafted costume jewelry," the Washington Post reported Oct. 17.
"They have sifted through floor-length gowns lovingly stored in closets and plucked every custom-made sari threaded with gold and worth thousands, disdaining saris worth only hundreds," it said.
Officers in Fairfax and Loudoun counties on the outskirts of the national capital of Washington, and the homeowners themselves, have yet to figure out how the burglars so successfully identify houses with large gold caches.
Before they became victims, many of the families were strangers, and they and police have eliminated many of the obvious links: churches, temples, schools or even grocery stores where they could have been tracked, the Post said.
The unsolved crimes mirror a pattern of 93 burglaries in Houston, 37 in central Illinois and a handful outside St. Paul, Minnesota.
"Most of us didn't even know each other," Raman Kumar, whose home in Centreville, another Washington suburb, was among the earliest break-in sites was quoted as saying.
"But here is the thing: If you know our customs, you know we carry a lot of gold."
A break-in Oct. 22was the most recent of three cases in South Riding in Loudoun.