Danny Chaita, who works in computer system administration, set up a system to access his girlfriend Anne Crosser's computer. He had done it so he could quickly solve her computer problems, rather than talk her through the steps over the telephone, but never expected the system to help solve a burglary, he said.

When Crosser's Cedar Crest home was burglarized Nov. 18, the thieves took her laptop. They quickly sold it.

When the man who had bought the computer took pictures of himself and saved them to the hard drive, Chaita accessed the computer and e-mailed the photos to himself.

Within two days, the man who bought the computer was seen at the gas station at Interstate 40's Zuzax exit, unaware of any connection he might have had with a burglary case, according to Bernalillo County Sheriff's Sgt. Ray Chavez.

"He didn't know it was stolen," Chavez said.

The man told deputies where he'd bought the computer, which was enough to get a search warrant for an apartment near Tramway and Central, Chavez said. As a result, four people were arrested and admitted to six burglaries in the East Mountains.

Chaita said he didn't feel vindicated now that the thieves were caught but hopes the thieves spend some time in jail.

"That's all I wanted, them to be in jail for a while," he said.

The Sheriff's Department showed stolen goods from that burglary ring and another, both of which targeted the East Mountains, on Nov. 30. Chaita and his girlfriend recovered a few items, including a safe — which had been broken into and no longer contained the $6,000 they'd left in it, they said. The thieves claim there was $4,000 in the safe.

They also recovered a television and an electric heater.

"They stole the heater, can you believe it?" he asked.

The sheriff's department has arrested five people from the other burglary ring, according to Sgt. Sid Covington. That case broke when police stopped a man on a stolen motorcycle who was carrying stolen property, including firearms.

The criminals were very organized, working in teams with a system for searching homes for expensive goods that they could move quickly and even using lookouts to avoid getting caught in the act.

The recent arrests bring the total to three high-profile busts in about a month, Covington pointed out. He said that amounts of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stolen goods have been recovered, including more than a dozen firearms, and that's just what the thieves had not yet sold.

He said these cases are being solved because the street crimes unit, which was put together about a year ago, is taking a more aggressive approach in seeking out criminals.

Chavez pointed out that homeowners can be aggressive, too. He held up one of the firearms recovered in one of the arrests, an assault rifle believed to be the property of an East Mountains resident.

"The burglars are actually lucky that they weren't met with this at the font door," he said.