Miami ring stole 19,000 pounds of Perry Ellis perfume. The last member faces prison
The Perry Ellis perfume caper has finally come to a close.
About eight years ago, a ring of Miami-area thieves stole a $230,000 shipment of the designer brand’s perfume weighing more than 19,000 pounds from a Hialeah tractor-trailer that was destined for Texas.
The last of four defendants charged with the precious cargo heist has been found guilty in Miami federal court and now faces up to 10 years in prison at his sentencing in April.
Eligio Bacallao, 69, of Miami was convicted of conspiring to commit cargo theft and a related charge in a late January jury trial before U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard. Bacallao was prosecuted years after the perfume heist because he eluded FBI agents until 2022 — long after the other three members of the ring had been arrested, convicted and sentenced to prison.
According to court documents, including an indictment, this is how the perfume caper unfolded:
Began in Hialeah
On April 22, 2016, a Hialeah trucking company employee, Roberto Palacios Correoso, was asked to drive a tractor-trailer containing 24 pallets of Perry Ellis perfume to Laredo, Texas. The cargo truck was equipped with a GPS device to track its course.
But before making the trip to Texas, Palacios drove the tractor-trailer to another cargo company at a transportation hub in Miami-Dade, where he, Bacallao and others unloaded 22 of the 24 pallets of perfume. The power supply to the GPS device was also damaged in an effort to disable the tracking device.
That same day, Bacallao and another co-conspirator, Maritza Garcia Durates, drove two Ryder trucks to the cargo hub and loaded the 22 pallets of perfume onto them.
Bacallao and Garcia drove the Ryder trucks to the Miami-Dade residence of Claudia Maritza, who hid the pallets of stolen perfume bottles under a tarp but later lied to FBI agents that they contained olive oil.
Two days later, Palacios filed a false police report in Texas claiming that the tractor-trailer, along with the Perry Ellis perfume shipment, had been stolen earlier that day at a rest stop.
While Palacios, Garcia and Maritza were arrested in late 2016, FBI agents would not catch up with Bacallao until his arrest in July 2022.
