How Did Crime Tourism Crew Get Notorious LAPD Cop Turned Killer Chris Dorner's Gun?

Visitors to the Four Seasons Beverly Wilshire must have felt like extras in a movie earlier this month when a British man sitting with his wife and five-year-old twin daughters on the patio of "The Blvd" restaurant was pounced on by gunman who demanded his million-dollar watch.

The brazen robbery disrupted diners around 6:39 pm on August 7, federal prosecutors say. The victim, visiting Los Angeles from their home in the United Arab Emirates, had a nice view of Rodeo Drive from his seat next to his wife, their girls sitting across from them at a table on the far west side of the patio.

Suddenly from the sidewalk, a man approached the table and "pointed a black semi-automatic handgun directly," at the victim. The gunman, to make his point that he was ready to shoot, "pulled the slide," to chamber a round and pointed the weapon at the man's head. Suddenly a second robber appeared and yanked the victim's Patek Philippe Nautilus 5711/113p-001 Emerald Nautilus wristwatch off his wrist.

In the chaos, diners fled screaming from the patio, according to receipts of unpaid bills shown in the complaint.

The thieves then took off running down South Rodeo Drive. Beverly Hills Police found CCTV footage of the crime, and followed other security camera footage until they found the thieves jump into a blue Toyota Corolla parked nearby. That footage started the crew's unraveling, federal prosecutors say.

Beverly Hills investigators would soon learn that the highly sophisticated robbery crew is part of an alarming trend of "crime tourists," who travel the U.S. to target wealthy enclaves in Los Angeles, and other locations, popular with upscale residents. Two days earlier the same men, police would learn according to a federal criminal complaint, had pulled off a similar armed robbery in Beverly Hills, ripping a Rolex off a man's wrist at gunpoint.

Investigators executing a search warrant on August 10 search at the suspects Santa Monica Airbnb where the two gunmen, along with a female companion traveling with them, made a shocking discovery: secreted under a pillow aws a Glock handgun registered to notorious killer cop LAPD Christopher Dorner.

In a bedroom used by the suspected gunman in both Beverly Hills watch robberies, Eduardo Padron Rojas, 19, of Venezuela, Beverly Hills Police Department detectives recovered a "Glock 21 .45 caliber handgun, bearing serial number HAZ636, loaded with a magazine, underneath a pillow, inside the pillowcase." The gun had belonged to Dorner, according to the criminal complaint.

Dorner made national headlines in 2013 when he went on a wild killing spree  targeting fellow law enforcement officers, part of a manifesto in which he declared war on his department, their families and their associates unless the department admitted publicly he was fired in retaliation for reporting excessive force.

The disgruntled cop murdered two police officers, the daughter of a former LAPD captain and her fiancé, and wounded three others before he was shot dead in a gun battle with San Bernardino Sheriffs at a cabin in Big Bear. The cabin then exploded into flames.

It remains unclear how the crew got Dorner's gun, prosecutors said.

The robbers were nabbed in a traffic stop in Blythe while driving in a different stolen car on the 10 Freeway at 7th Street. "The Blythe Police Department recovered two phones from the center console of the vehicle; one appeared to belong to the female occupant, and the other appeared to belong to the driver, Colombian national, Jamer Mauricio Sepulveda Salazar, 21. He was, prosecutors said, the getaway driver in the Aug. 7 heist and was wearing the same shirt he wore that day when he was arrested.

He is now charged with one count of interference with commerce by robbery and one count of possessing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence. His partner Padron Rojas, who had Dorner's gun, is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit Hobbs Act robbery.

The men, prosecutors say, belong to a South American Theft Groups , armed thieves so terrifying the State Department has assigned groups like theirs transnational criminal organization status, which is usually reserved for terrorists. The Department of Justice says the SAGTs are  "comprised of citizens from countries such as Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela. These groups commonly exploit the U.S. immigration system and make fraudulent claims to enter the United States."

Another term used to describe this is “Crime Tourism," prosecutors say.