“I’m not a automotive thief, I’m a burglar.”
That’s what 59-year-old Frank Ortiz allegedly advised Chicago police in 2023 after they caught him behind the wheel of a stolen Volkswagen Jetta. Certainly, Ortiz, a 14-time convicted felon, has all the time been extra of a break-into-houses man than a steal-somebody’s-car man. He served 4½ years for that auto theft case.
Now, Ortiz is again in court docket, this time accused of returning to what prosecutors name his true specialty: residential housebreaking. Chicago police arrested him lately on expenses that he broke into properties in Lakeview and Logan Sq..
Round midday on April 25, a girl was in her bed room within the 2300 block of North Albany when Ortiz entered the again door and claimed to be a Chicago police officer, prosecutors stated in a detention petition. Suspicious, the girl texted her sister to name the true police.
She allegedly noticed Ortiz go away with a black bag containing her valuables.
Detectives additionally recognized Ortiz as one of many males who broke right into a Lakeview house within the 1600 block of West Byron on April 4. Prosecutors stated a two-man staff pressured its approach in round 10:45 that morning and received away with an estimated $5,860 in proceeds. They allegedly took purses, jewellery, fragrance, an Xbox controller, AirTags, backpacks, and even bottles of wine, in accordance with a legal grievance.
Choose John Hock granted prosecutors’ request to maintain him detained.
Ortiz’s memorable “I’m a burglar” line first got here to gentle in Might 2023 when cops pulled him over within the 1100 block of North Cicero and located his car’s identification quantity coated up. The black Jetta turned out to have been stolen after a burglar(!) grabbed its keys throughout a house break-in the earlier December.
Ortiz insisted later that police misunderstood him. He claimed he merely identified that his prior convictions had been for housebreaking. He additionally tried to distance himself from the Jetta, telling a choose, “My daughter, she received the automotive from someplace.”
His rap sheet stretches again a long time. Along with the auto theft case, his earlier convictions embrace escape from digital monitoring in 2018, residential housebreaking in 2013, possession of a firearm with a defaced serial quantity in 2011, theft in 2009, and tried housebreaking in 2006. Earlier than that, he served a 16-year sentence for residential housebreaking in 1999, two three-year phrases for being a felon in possession of firearms in 1998, and 12 years for armed theft in 1984.
