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Authorities Bust NYC Theft Ring Suspected Of Stealing 291 Luxury Cars

NEW YORK (AP) -- Authorities say more than a dozen men arrested in overnight raids are part of a ring suspected of stealing 291 expensive cars from Brooklyn and Queens worth more than $10 million.

Police say the men used information obtained by car dealership employees to make counterfeit keys.

1010 WINS' Steve Sandberg details the 'sophisticated' operation

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City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly says the 21-member ring was doing "a swift business'' in reselling Lexus and Toyota vehicles in the U.S. and overseas in Africa, Afghanistan and Yemen.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who calls the ring "extremely sophisticated," says 16 of the people indicted face felony enterprise corruption charges.

They include brothers who worked at a Brooklyn-based Toyota dealer who used cars' identification numbers to search the Toyota/Lexus database to find the corresponding key codes.

(TM and Copyright 2011 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2011 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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