CHICAGO — Randall Brown, a 30-time convicted felon accused of stealing motorized scooters in Lincoln Park and Streeterville two years ago, is heading back to prison for his 31st and 32nd felony convictions.
Brown, also known as Randall Browning, pleaded guilty on Thursday to two counts of possessing a stolen motor vehicle to resolve the scooter cases. Judge Anjana Hansen gave him concurrent six-year sentences.
However, because he earned 942 days of credit in jail, and the state will cut his sentence by 50% for good behavior, Brown is expected to be back on the streets in about 153 days.
Brown had been on parole for less than a month for ten similar cases when Chicago police detectives began looking at him as a suspect in a string of scooter thefts stretching across the North Side and downtown.
They eventually charged him with two cases that involved photo and video evidence.
In one case, a Lincoln Park woman saw Brown walking away with her husband’s scooter on the morning of April 19, 2023. When she ordered Brown to stop, he claimed the $1,400 scooter was his, prosecutors said.
The woman took pictures of the thief with her phone and shared them on social media.
Days later, a surveillance camera recorded Brown stealing another scooter from the 100 block of East Grand in Streeterville. That scooter’s owner, Nate Vaysenberg, shared the video with CWBChicago, and it didn’t take long for police and the public to identify the thief.
Prosecutors said Brown admitted to taking the scooter in Lincoln Park and selling it to someone on Central Park Avenue.
That’s the same operation Brown ran for several weeks in 2020—stealing scooters from parking spots and reselling them for a fraction of their value, authorities said.
Brown received ten concurrent 8-year sentences for the 2020 crimes, but he earned special credits in prison and was released in less than three years because he demonstrated excellent skills as a mechanic, a source said.
Brown’s long criminal career as a thief and forger stretches back to 1993.
In an entertaining moment in 2016, a Wrigleyville resident called 911 to report two people making an adult movie in a car behind their home. As it turned out, the people in the vehicle were undercover cops using video equipment to record Brown as he broke into a nearby coach house. They arrested him when he stepped out of the home.
He received eight years for that break-in, a second burglary, and identity theft, but he was released in 2020 after serving four. Scooters started disappearing from city streets soon after that. Before those cases, 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 and 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.
