Bellevue police investigate Putz Golf theft

Welcome back to Seattle News Today. Bellevue Police announcing an arrest in a case that they've been investigating for quite some time. Fox 13's David Rose has also been on this case investigating it. This is a theft that happened in Bellevue. A quick action, organized crew comes in, grab and go, and then they're out the door fast. David, joining us in the Fox 13. David, thanks for taking some time to talk to us today. Yeah, AJ, this is the day I love, being able to tell people when a bad guy gets captured. And in this case, we're going to end up with three bad guys in custody. Two are in custody now. One's in custody and has been charged, so we can name him for you. His name is Cameron Raleigh. So, AJ, let's take them back to the video from PuttsGolf in Bellevue. There's Cameron Raleigh. This is the guy that's in jail right now. This is the video of the actual theft, which turned out to be a robbery. So there's a guy holding the door there, and inside, police say, is Cameron Raleigh. He grabs a bunch of brand-new ping drivers at about $700 apiece. out the door he goes well that employee followed them and the guy holding the door then put a beat down on that employee he had to go to the hospital uh thought he had a concussion had a a cut to his forehead so that makes it a robbery we'll fast forward to the very next day the day after this i happen to be in that store in bellevue and they tell me what happened and i say oh heck no we're going to do what we can to help you get them. So I get the video from them. I reach out to Bellevue police and I say, Hey, do you know about this case? They had taken an online and over the phone report. Uh, and once I did that, I was also able to get a good picture of the guy you see there stealing the clubs, Cameron Raleigh from another golf store in Bellevue, because these stores, they share images with other stores, uh, when something like this happens. So there's a pro golf store there's a greg rogers performance center and a friend of mine at the Greg Rogers Performance Center had a very clear picture of the suspect you see there stealing the clubs because they'd come into their shop and they had cased it and so using that clearer photo I went to Facebook and I was able to find this guy after getting a tip from one of our viewers Cameron Rally and I found the Ping drivers that he was selling on Facebook Marketplace so I quickly screenshot those because I knew he was going to take them down as soon as they got sold I sent all of that to Bellevue Police uh they assigned Detective Jeff Christianson to the case and this guy leaves no stone unturned so he picked up the case from there uh and he was able to track down other video other pictures because they also hit the pro golf store back in July and got even better pictures than the one you see here so there's the store there's the photo you can see a much better photo look at the tattoo AJ on his right arm there that tattoo turned out to be a key piece of evidence because in the Facebook photo I found of Cameron he's flexing his tattoo across his back which stretches down his left arm so police were able to match the Facebook photo to this photo and after all of that they say Cameron Rally he looked defeated when they arrested him and he admitted to that crime and to the other crime. He was like, oh, I guess it's over. And they got him after they did a sting on him. He was selling water bottles, these fancy water bottles you find online, and they used a fake account. They set up a sting on him. When he showed up, they took him into custody last Thursday. He was too sick, dope sick, to go to court. So they moved his arraignment to tomorrow. So he is going to be in court tomorrow. he's charged with organized retail theft in the first degree he's being held on a fifty thousand dollar warrant for fifty thousand dollar bail pardon me now the guy that you see holding the door open he's the one that actually punched the employee that guy is going to be charged hopefully with robbery first degree because he used force so they're still working to track him down but he also they say is involved in the pro golf uh theft and they got really good pictures of him from those so what turned out to be you know just me happening to be be in there led to kind of a bust of these guys and Cameron Rallies had 18 warrants issued for his arrest he already has uh four or five theft convictions aj so it's not like his first rodeo these are the people that are living out on the edge they're just stealing what they need to feed their drug habit it goes on every single day and every time you can get one of them they do a little bit more time in prison when they're convicted because they build up their points in our state the more points you have because of convictions the more time you get in jail david i don't know how far you can go into this but we were talking earlier you mentioned that um the suspect feeling defeated he basically turned himself in and essentially because he had no idea what was going on set up this operation where he thinks he is gonna make a couple bucks selling these expensive water containers again i don't know how much you can get into the details but you were saying that he didn't even have the water containers he was saying he had to sell before he made this deal. So just kind of going through this process of how organized it is, this retail theft. Well, he actually was selling the water bottles. There's like $40 water bottles that I guess a lot of people want. He already had them for sale on his Facebook Marketplace. So detectives used a fake account. They set up a time. He ghosted them four or five times. They were down there. They were very frustrated with this guy because they're doing surveillance. They're waiting for him, waiting for him, he comes up with different excuses, the reason is he doesn't have a car so he was borrowing his friend's cars, what he did was, they say, is he went to a Fred Meyer, he stole the water bottles right and then he showed up for the meet with the stolen water bottles so they're going to go back to the Fred Meyer and get the video of him stealing the water bottles he's going to be facing more charges down in Pierce County, um, and so when he showed up, uh they basically just surrounded him really quickly took him into custody, he knew it was up, they took him back to Bellevue, um, they arrested him in Lakewood is where they got it finally, um, but He's been around Tacoma, around Hosmer. He's been around Spanaway. They've tracked down a lot of people. They got the guy who drove the getaway car He hasn't been charged yet, so I'm not naming him. But there's a guy they also got that lives in Bonney Lake that drove the getaway car. So they're going to get him, and then they're going to get this guy also for the robbery. They're going to be able to track him down. He's going to be elusive because a lot of these people, they don't have a permanent place. They stay with friends. They stay at places. Sometimes they stay in a tent. They stay in a crappy little apartment right around 98th and Hosmer. So they move around a lot, AJ. It's not like they don't live normal lives like you and I do, right? So they're a little bit difficult to find, but they will not give up till they get him. And now that you've said it, that's what's so fascinating to me is the metrics of it, the specifics of this case. This person didn't even have the things they were claiming to sell. You're telling me that they're going through Facebook Marketplace. then they have to go and and what you're saying is steal the things that they are claiming they have to sell so a wild situation uh this guy in custody david this case i remember seeing this video from a long time ago so this is something that you guys have been working on for a while yeah i was uh back in uh september when i first learned about it and um i was getting a lot of tips from our viewers and i'm so grateful to our viewers they really really want to help they were emailing me um i was advising them to submit tip to Crime Stoppers so if you look in the charging documents it will even say that tips to Crime Stoppers um provided facebook links etc and those kinds of things because people always ask me AJ well how can i get the reward um i don't pay the reward Crime Stoppers does so when people contact me if i think it's a really good tip i will immediately have them submit a tip to Crime Stoppers get their tip id number when you put a tip through P3 Tips you can put a picture video names they issue you a P3 tip id you just screenshot out that on your phone you hang on to it and then when an arrest is made the detective tells Crime Stoppers which tip was the best one they then go into the P3 Tips app they update the tip and they say hey you're getting the money they don't do cash anymore they do uh gift cards now um they stopped using cash a long time ago but uh but they still pay the rewards they're paying out literally thousands of dollars every month um and and not everybody that gives a tip gets a reward sometimes they get upset right because it's always going to be whatever the best tip was like Maybe you were the first one to positively identify the person, and you can tell the officer where to find them. Or maybe you know the Facebook post and the link and those kinds of things. Sometimes the detectives will even pick two tips to pay. And then the reward amount is based on the charge that is filed. So a murder pays a $1,000 reward. And then it's a sliding scale, robbery around $750 and down from there. But I've never seen a reward less than $450. dollars so that's a pretty good amount of and it's you know tax-free you just get that money that's pretty good for just dropping a dime on somebody especially if you don't already like them right aj no if you're looking to make some quick money and you have some information that is one easy way to do it