Six people are facing federal charges for a string of violent smash-and-grab robberies that tore through jewelry stores in Paterson, Union City and Wayne, New Jersey, starting in early 2025 — a case investigators say they cracked with blood evidence, cloud-stored selfies and a trail of hasty online searches for wound care.
The charges were announced by Robert Frazer, according to NJ.com, which reports that masked perpetrators used crowbars or sledgehammers to smash through glass doors and windows, then grabbed jewelry from display cases while customers were still inside the stores. Acting Essex County Prosecutor's Office Detective Stephanie Roddy said customers were caught in the middle of violent robberies carried out by masked men, per the same report.
Blood at the Scene Pointed to Two Newark Men
The May 14, 2025, robbery in Paterson left its own mark on the case: two of the perpetrators cut themselves on broken glass while breaking in, and the blood they left behind did not stay anonymous. Investigators matched that blood DNA to Shaquan Jones, 24, of Newark, and Kayron Caldwell, 34, also of Newark, the outlet's report states.
The digital trail made the forensic case even tighter. Images recovered from Jones's own cloud storage account reportedly showed him holding cash with a bandage wrapped around his left hand, while Caldwell, in the days after the robbery, searched online for butterfly bandages and wound treatment — the kind of self-incriminating detail that turned a glass cut into a paper trail.
A Sledgehammer Purchase Traced Back to Union City
Weeks before a March 7, 2025, robbery in Union City, surveillance footage allegedly captured Derreck Proctor, 33, of Newark, buying two 10-pound sledgehammers with cash. Blood evidence recovered from that scene later matched Proctor's DNA directly, closing the loop between the purchase and the break-in, the outlet reports.
A Crash in Wayne
The case's break came on June 16, 2025, when a Wayne robbery ended in chaos as the suspects' getaway vehicle crashed.
Court paperwork tied to that Wayne robbery frames the charges narrowly for those three men: Peterson, Boyd and Drakeford were each charged by complaint with one count of Hobbs Act robbery, per a statement attributed to the District of New Jersey. FBI Newark partnered with state and local law enforcement agencies to investigate and track down the robbery suspects, the nj.com report notes.
Each defendant now faces up to 20 years in prison for Hobbs Act robbery, along with a maximum fine of $250,000 or twice the amount of money involved in the offense, whichever is greater, according to the outlet's reporting.
Part of a Wider Wave Hitting N.J. Jewelers
The Paterson, Union City and Wayne cases are not the only jewelry store smash-and-grabs New Jersey has seen. A daytime robbery at Bloomingdale's inside The Shops at Riverside in Hackensack drew a response from the Bergen County Regional SWAT Team, the sheriff's office and local detectives after shoppers reported sounds like gunshots, according to InStore. News 12 New Jersey reported that the Hackensack incident marked the 10th daytime smash-and-grab at a New Jersey jewelry store since January, with others hitting Perth Amboy, Woodbridge, Bogota, Wayne, Jersey City and Edison, per InStore's report. Most of those other cases involved masked groups armed with sledgehammers using stolen getaway cars, and no arrests had been made in them at the time of that report.
The Jewelers' Security Alliance's executive vice president suggested gold prices above $4,000 an ounce were fueling the wave of crimes, and indicated multiple separate groups were likely responsible, InStore's report adds.
This is not the first time New Jersey jewelry stores have been targeted by an organized robbery operation. Back in 2023, federal prosecutors charged 16 people in a 19-count indictment tied to a multistate spree that hit nine jewelry stores, including four in New Jersey, between January 2022 and January 2023, according to a separate NJ.com report. Those stores — Virani Jewelers in Iselin, Paradise Jewelry Store in Paterson, Chintamanis in Franklin Park and Sara Emporium Jewelry in Jersey City — were among businesses owned by Asian Americans that the alleged crime ring specifically targeted, according to National Jeweler. The group was accused of Hobbs Act robbery, firearm-related offenses, conspiracy to commit Hobbs Act robbery and carjacking.
