Rochester Man Sentenced for Stealing Interstate Shipment from Railcar

ROCHESTER, NY—U.S. Attorney William J. Hochul, Jr. announced today that Timothy M. Stone, 34, of Rochester, New York, who was convicted of conspiracy to commit burglary of a railcar, burglary of a railcar, and theft of an interstate shipment following a jury trial, was sentenced to 12 months and ordered to pay $3,069.28 in restitution by U.S. District Judge Charles J. Siragusa.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Brett A. Harvey, who handled the case, stated that on June 30, 2009, Stone, along with co-conspirators Richard E. Riedman, Anthony Russell, and Anthony Toscano, stole more than 17 gross tons of a high-grade scrap steel from a railcar at a CSXT rail yard in Batavia, New York. Stone and his co-conspirators used a logging truck to remove the scrap steel from the railcar, wore dark clothing, used lookouts to avoid detection by law enforcement authorities and pedestrians, and used two-way radios to communicate with each other during the theft.

Stone and his co-conspirators were apprehended by members of the Genesee County Sheriff’s Office in the logging truck and a pick-up truck as they left the scene of the theft in the early morning hours of June 30, 2009. The bales were in the process of being shipped to a steel mill in Pennsylvania when Stone and the other defendants stole them. Stone, Riedman, Russell, and Toscano were convicted after a two-week jury trial before Judge Siragusa in September 2012.

Toscano was sentenced to 18 months in prison. Russell will be sentenced on August 16, 2013, and Riedman on September 16, 2013. The conviction was the culmination of an investigation on the part of special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, under the direction of Acting Special Agent in Charge Richard M. Frankel; and the Genesee County Sheriff’s Office, under the direction of Gary Maha.