Twenty-time convicted felon Randall Brown became thirty-time convicted felon Randall Brown last week when he pleaded guilty to stealing ten Moped-style scooters from parking spots across the North Side during the summer of 2020.
Prosecutors said Brown, 53, stole motor scooters on the North Side and resold them on the West Side after he was paroled in April 2020 for his 18th, 19th, and 20th felonies.
A tipster told Chicago police in July 2020 that a White male who goes by the names Shawn Flynn and Randy Brown was selling stolen scooters at deep discounts and traveled in a brown or tan pick-up truck, prosecutors said. The investigators focused on Brown after running “Randy Brown” through a law enforcement database and seeing his photo and extensive criminal history.
Two weeks later, Chicago police pulled over a gold pick-up truck for a traffic violation on the West Side. Brown was driving, and a motorized scooter was in the truck bed, prosecutors said. They let him go with a citation and undercover investigators began tracking and surveilling the truck.
Within hours, Brown returned to the North Side, where covert officers watched him roll a scooter off the street, manipulate it with tools, and then ride away with the vehicle, prosecutors said. They arrested him.
Investigators suspect Brown stole far more than just ten scooters. CPD records show there were 22 scooter-type thefts in 2020 before Brown was paroled and 122 in the months after he got out.
Brown pleaded guilty to ten counts of possessing a stolen motor vehicle last week. Judge James Linn sentenced him to eight years on each count with the sentences to be served concurrently, according to court records.
The eight-year term will be reduced by 50% for good behavior and Brown will receive 650 days credit for time spent in jail before sentencing. Officials have not announced his expected parole date, but they will probably release him in the summer of 2024.
Brown has been busted by undercover police operations before.
Back in 2016, a Wrigleyville resident called 911 to report two people making a porn movie in a car behind their home. But there was no porn being filmed. The people in the car were undercover cops who were using video equipment to record Brown as he broke into a nearby coach house. They arrested him when he stepped out of the home.
Before his conviction for that burglary, another burglary, and an identity theft in 2016, Brown went to prison for:
- One year for theft in 2011
- Another year for theft in 2011
- Ten years for burglary in 2010
- Another ten years for receiving/possessing a stolen vehicle in 2010
- 30 months for aggravated impersonation of police in 2005
- Another 30 months for theft in 2005
- Another seven years for aiding-abetting possession of a stolen vehicle in 2005
- Another five years for forgery in 2005
- Another two years for knowingly possessing a fake license in 2005
- Four years for being a felon who failed to return from furlough in 2001
- Six years for burglary in 2000.
- Another 42 months for burglary in 2000
- Five years for theft in 1998
- Six years for receiving/possessing a stolen motor vehicle in 1997
- Six years for unlawful possession of a stolen vehicle in 1993
- Another three years for receiving/possessing a stolen motor vehicle in 1993
- And yet another three years for theft in 1993.
