Prosecution outlines case in federal copper theft trial

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

A Granger man worked with his stepfather to steal almost $3 million worth of copper from a Gary warehouse but did little to cover his tracks, a federal prosecutor claimed during opening arguments Monday in the trial of Gregory Wolfe.

Wolfe, 21, is accused of using his position as a supervisor at a KTN warehouse at 700 Chase St. to steal more than 300 tons of copper, working with his stepfather Gregory Harris, 40, of Ogden Dunes, to then sell the copper to another warehouse in Michigan.

Wolfe’s attorney, Arlington Foley, said he would wait to give his opening argument until prosecutors rest their case.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Ratcliffe described during his opening argument at the U.S. District Court in Hammond how a security video taped Wolfe opening loading dock doors at 3:45 a.m. one day during the conspiracy to let in several semi-trailers. The drivers of the semis will testify that they came several times to pick up loads of copper from the warehouse, Ratcliffe said.

KTN began storing 12,000 tons of the copper in April 2008 for J.P. Morgan Chase Bank & Co., which had bought it as an investment. Ratcliffe said that starting in the fall of 2009, Wolfe and Harris, who was the manager of the warehouse, directed other employees to take a couple of sheets, about 3-feet by 3-feet and less than an inch thick, from bundles that contained anywhere from 16 to 24 sheets.

Because the sheets were so thin, Ratcliffe said, no one noticed until about September 2010 because the stacks seemed to look the same. However, Chase did a weight audit of some stacks, which weighed thousands of pounds, and noticed that copper was missing.

Wolfe’s and Harris’ response, Ratcliffe said, was to do one last big hurrah before a complete audit scheduled a few days after the first one, stealing entire bundles.

“They reacted by stealing as much copper as they could between the first audit and second audit,” Ratcliffe said.

He said Wolfe told his girlfriend during a night at the Peninsula Hotel in Chicago after the first audit that he’d been discovered and his story would be he was just loading the copper, Ratcliffe said.

Testimony is expected to continue today.

Contact Teresa Auch Schultz at 648-3120.