Fremont Jewelry Raid Shows How California’s ‘Reforms’ Empower Criminal Mobs
California’s ruling class promised “reform,” but what they delivered is a state where a mob can ram a stolen car through a storefront, loot $1.7 million in gold and diamonds in 70 seconds, and mostly vanish back into the wind.
I have covered a number of bold daytime robberies in California, exacerbated by closing prisons and criminal-supporting sentencing policies.
The incidents were so numerous that a phrase became a staple of reports describing these shocking thefts, “smash-and-grab” robberies. In one instance, $5 million in jewelry from a Beverly Hills store was taken in a daytime heist.
Last June, there was another flash-mob-robbery at a store in Fremont, California. The Department of Justice recently released footage of the incident, and it is disturbing.
Video released by the U.S. Department of Justice shows a robbery crew brazenly strike a local jewelry store during the day with lightning speed, clearing out an estimated $1.7 million in jewelry in about 70 seconds.
The video, obtained by this news organization through a public records request, shows a seemingly chaotic scene. About two dozen robbers rush into Kumar Jewelers with picks, hammers and backpacks, smashing cases and stuffing their bags while the employees run for cover in the back.
Prosecutors say these types of robberies, while rare, are meticulously planned and designed to overcome increasingly prevalent electronic surveillance.
The June 18, 2025 robbery lasted about 90 seconds, from the time a stolen Honda smashed down the door as two gunmen held a security guard hostage, to the last robber’s exit. They left almost nothing behind. The $1.7 million in gold and diamonds represented 75 to 80 percent of the store’s entire inventory, the owner later estimated to prosecutors.
🚨 VIDEO OF $1.7 MILLION JEWELRY STORE ROBBERY IN CALIFORNIA GOES VIRAL AGAIN
A dramatic smash-and-grab robbery that lasted barely a minute is going viral again online — nearly a year after the crime happened.#California #Fremont #RetailCrime #BreakingNews #BayArea pic.twitter.com/sizSXbw6Lz
— THE INFORMANT USA 🇺🇸 (@TheInformantUSA) March 13, 2026
Earlier this year, a jury indicted four of the over 20 suspected thieves in connection with this incident.
The defendants have been identified as 20-year-old Afatupetaiki Faasisila of San Jose, 20-year-old Jose Herrada-Aragon of Concord, 19-year-old Andres Palestino of Concord and 19-year-old Tom Parker Donegan of Fairfield. Prosecutors said the four were indicted on Dec. 18 and the indictment was unsealed Tuesday.
According to the criminal complaint, the four were among two dozen masked individuals who took part in a takeover-style robbery of the store.
Surveillance video showed a gray Honda ramming into the store’s front façade. One of the individuals brandished a firearm at the store’s security guard, while another held the guard’s arms, forcing him to the ground.
Prosecutors said Faasisila, Herrada-Aragon and Palestino were among those who allegedly stormed the business. Robbers used hammers and other tools to smash display cases and grab an estimated $1.7 in jewelry before leaving in waiting vehicles.
Only four were caught because police focused on their getaway car, which eventually crashed. Officers caught the four who were indicted when they attempted to flee on foot.
Unfortunately, the other remain unidentified and are likely still roaming California.
“Forced to decide which car to pursue, officers continued after (a) Black Acura, which led them on a pursuit through several residential areas in Fremont,” federal prosecutors wrote in court filings. “During the pursuit, the Black Acura passed other vehicles on the wrong side of the road, ran stop signs at multiple intersections, and reached speeds of approximately 80 miles per hour while veering across lanes.”
..Faasisila and Palestino were released as the case is pending, according to records reviewed by the East Bay Times.
Most of the bandits remain at large.
California’s ruling class promised “reform,” but what they delivered is a state where a mob can ram a stolen car through a storefront, loot $1.7 million in gold and diamonds in 70 seconds, and mostly vanish back into the wind while business owners are left with shattered glass and shattered livelihoods.
The Fremont heist is not an anomaly; it is the predictable result of years of downgraded penalties, prison closures, and sanctuary‑style indulgence that tell organized thieves the odds are in their favor, not the victim’s.
Until voters finally reject the soft‑on‑crime, sanctuary‑city mania that turned “smash‑and‑grab” into a normal part of the California vocabulary, they should expect more viral videos, more boarded‑up shops, and more politicians pretending to be shocked by the chaos they carefully engineered.
Of course, better choices in California would be likelier if protections against vote fraud were in place.
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Vote fraud is a gateway “drug” for extended crime.
This is what Gavin Noisome brags about and wants to bequeath to the rest of the nation.
Stay frosty.
Voters. Uh huh. So all those unverified mass mail in ballots are going to elect conservative reforms someday somehow? Is that the theory?
“It’s them again, isn’t it Yogi?”
The agreement is that we forego vigilantism in exchange for prosecution & incarceration.
When the other side isn’t upholding their end of the bargain, it’s only a matter of time before we don’t uphold ours.
So when another incident like this happens and the store owner mows them down with an automatic weapon, I will not be voting guilty. I’ll be buying him a drink.
One Or two mow downs like you talk about and you’d see this sort of crime wave slow by about 90%, I’d think.
It’s ALWAYS the Amish…
It’s not all of them but it’s always them.
Yes, there are some good Amish people.
If a store owner were to do what you suggested, and the dead perp was from a sacred political class, you can bet the California AG would come after them hammer and tongs.
“He was a good boy!” says his “awntee”, while holding an 11×14 framed picture of his cap-and-gown portrait taken at his Kindergarten graduation,
Father? In prison, deceased or missing completely.
“Daddy’s home!”
Never gonna hear that one.
Went out for cigs and never came back.
Papa was a rolling stone?
The fatigue is real, and growing.
Please let me be on that jury.
Newsom has a thing for announcing new, bold projects, presented with shovel ceremony backdrops; a wood bordered container filled with three yards of pristine Christian Dior dirt, fifteen smiling CalAgency and union supplicants, and of course, 15 shiny new wood-handled shovels.
Great fanfare ensues. Press lap it up like kittens around a bowl of milk. Everyone is perfectly amazed and sparkling with enthusiasm.
And that’s generally the last we ever hear about the project. Funds are distributed among Newsom’s NGO mercenary army. It never moves past the meeting and planning stages of how to manage the project planning.
Not true!
I heard that California has a high speed train!
Who is the fence for the jewelry, asking cuz I need an anniversary gift for wife
newsom
These stores need armed guards and need to make the thugs eat lead sandwiches.
Oh, you can’t use deadly force in defense of property? “I saw the robbers reach into their waistbands — I thought they were armed and I feared for my life.”
Maybe an alternative for soft on crime jurisdictions would be a paint/marking/pepper spray combo delivered via sprinklers. The staff can retreat to the ‘safe room’ and hit button to activate it. The perps now got paint and pepper spray all over them making them easier to ID as they depart and it impedes their escape. Add some flash/strobes and ear piercing alarms to the mix with the goal of disorienting and delaying the perps at the scene and just maybe they get caught by responding LEO.
Needs more upvotes. This is a heck of a lot easier, less risky, trackable and cheaper way
to “do business.” Some lefty will figure a way around conviction but “painted and photographed” thugs – maybe use pink oil paint.
Take it one step further. Add some inches-thick bullet-resistant polycarbonate slabs on pneumatically driven systems both at the front of the store and at the employee’s safe room. THEN deploy the gas and permanent paint while shutting off the HVAC system to keep it all concentrated there. By the time the police show up they’ll probably be quite incapacitated by the concentration of the gas.
Then you can open the front slab just enough to let them out one at a time so the police can cuff them and stack them in squad cars. Of course, they’ll be released within milliseconds of being booked, but with permanent (and I like the idea of pink) paint all over them they’ll be laughed at by their “associates”.
I was thinking along the same lines. Cleaning up the mess caused by indelible dye would be less expensive than the loss of product.
There is an easier way. Close up business and move to a hospitable locale.
That’s another answer for sure.
Kinda hard to get a statement from a deceased criminal.
“Until voters finally reject the DEMOCRAT RUN (there, fixed it) soft‑on‑crime, sanctuary‑city mania that turned “smash‑and‑grab” into a normal part of the California vocabulary, they should expect more viral videos, more boarded‑up shops, and more politicians pretending to be shocked by the chaos they carefully engineered.”
Remember when Fremont was a Johnny Carson punchline?
The only thing that’s changed is Johnny Carson.
Fremont makes one appreciate Delano.
dems: if we dont allow our people to “gain income” they will just be a bigger burden on the welfare state
Hard to care anything about CA knowing that the voters there support, don’t give a sh…, and keep voting for Newsom every time he runs.
One wonders if this is really true, given all the likely vote fraud. Just something to consider whenever you say Californians deserve what they vote for. Maybe we don’t.
Just how I feel when posters here talk about stupid Rhode Island voters.
Something’s fishy.
I have empathy for conservatives living in California.
I have no empathy when they refuse to leave a place that has turned into a disaster.
We call that “Embrace the suck.”
As I understand it, many conservatives in California refuse to vote because they know their vote won’t make a difference.
CA residents fling lawsuits to demand CA Counties comply with voter registration lost maintenance would be a big step towards stopping the alleged shenanigans. Get the property tax records and the voter registration lists and compare addresses. Where there’s a dozen folks claiming the same address as their physical residence tat indicates something is wrong. Identify the commercial addresses and vacant lots. Get the postal change of address list and the death data from the County. Do the legwork to put together the evidentiary basis of a solid lawsuit to compel the culling of ineligible voters and legally insufficient voter registration data.
With access to data, AI could identify potentially fraudulent voter registrations in any given district in minutes. There’s no excuse to not do this across the country. At least no excuse other than “We can’t allow that because we’d be found out.”
Yep. It’s always curious to me when bureaucrats and/or politicians are opposed to basic transparency and simple steps that would go very to solve perceived issues or upon open examination dispel that perception. When someone doesn’t want the public to see something then that something is sure to be at minimum an embarrassment and probably criminal.
CA under dem super majority one party rule. Leftist appointed judges. Catch and release. Rinse repeat. Newscum is smiling.
And we care?
Nope.
California got the government they voted for, GOOD & HARD.