‘Burglar bunch’ puts media celebrity obsession in dock

Five Hollywood teenagers are alleged to have taken their age-group's fascination with celebrity to a logical, if extreme, conclusion.

Gleefully dubbed the Hollywood Hills Burglar Bunch by US media, the four teenage girls and one boy have been charged with burgling the homes of celebrities including Orlando Bloom, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and TV star Audina Partridge.

Police say the group, who are now all either 18 or 19, embarked on a crime spree in October 2008 which only came to a halt last month. It is claimed they used magazines and websites to target designer jewelry and clothes, and to work out when their celebrity owners might be out of town.

In a bizarre twist, it has emerged that at least one of the alleged gang had her own aspirations towards fame. Nineteen-year-old Alexis Neiers was about to appear in a reality TV pilot show with her family on the E! cable network. Police arrested
her on the set of the show about wannabe actresses, prompting her sister to tell the press: "My family is in so much debt. If this TV show falls through, you don't know how bad this is going to be."

If the supposed conspirators wanted to become famous themselves, their wish has been granted. Celebrity website Tmz.com has featured every twist of the thefts and arrests, and the teenagers, who mostly attended the same school for troubled children, are now as high-profile as some of the stars from whom they stole.

Police say Rachel Lee, Diana Tamayo, Courtney Ames, Nicholas Prugo and Alexis Neiers netted millions of dollars in the burglaries, allegedly fencing goods through a 27-year-old barman, Roy Lopez. Police said the hits were not subtle. LA detective Brett Goodkin said: "This is a no-brains caper. There's not a lot of self-awareness. They saw it, they wanted it, they took it and continued taking it."

Celebrity attorney Blair Berk, representing some of the victims of the burglaries, was quick to pass the buck to the media, blaming the "increasingly prying... paparazzi shots and magazine coverage" which he said offered an unreasonable temptation to any teen. He added: "There are only so many shots of a star's back gate before someone, be it a stalker or burglar, goes through it."

The veteran paparazzo and photo agency head, Frank Griffin, reacted angrily to Berk's comments, pointing out that many stars reveal their movements on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook and show off their expensive jewelry in magazines. And he said that new technology must have made such burglaries easier to plan, asking: "Why don't we blame Google Maps or Google Earth?"

The case leaves Hollywood casting agents with a dilemma: when the inevitable movie of the burglaries is made, should Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton play themselves, or members of the gang? ·