Fox news first reported on a multi-million-dollar cell phone theft ring being busted in Minneapolis, with the Mustafa family as the ringleaders of the operation, although the Minneapolis Star Tribune had far more details about the nuts and bolts of the scam, the Fox story actually published the addresses of the businesses involved. For some reason, those addresses brought back memories of a lyric from a famous Bob Dylan song: And here I sit so patiently/waiting to find out what price/you have to pay to get out of/going through all these things twice.
Seven and a half minutes later ("Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" is a LONG song) I realized why. I had indeed blogged about many of these businesses before, back when I was writing on the Adventures of Johnny Northside. Furthermore, in the comment section of that blog post, longtime northside residents spoke about how many of those businesses were selling fenced goods for ten years prior. That post, for the record, was written in 2009. So as far back as 1999, maybe longer, some of these businesses or at least businesses out of the same address, have been selling stolen goods in my community.
A little more about these places, especially the ones that doubled up on the stolen goods...
