Sanchez

The Marshalltown Police Department was busy with burglaries on Monday.

Oscar Sanchez, 33, was arrested for third-degree burglary. Captain Brian Batterson said the Marshalltown Police Department was contacted by an insurance investigator regarding Sanchez.

“He was going around, doing insurance work, asking people to pay for their deductible for insurance directly to him and pocketing the money,” Batterson said. “We are reviewing the case for more victims.”

After being made aware of this arrangement, detectives met with victims, and did surveillance of one of the arranged meetings. Sanchez met with the customer, and then left. The police department was able to stop him afterward.

Sanchez was allegedly requesting $1,000 deductible payments. Customers were led to believe that these payments were owed to maintain insurance. These payments were to be made in cash. Sanchez arranged to meet with customers at their home in person to collect the payments. It is suspected there are more victims.

There was also an attempted third-degree burglary at Alliant Energy, a second-degree burglary at Synergy Contracting, and burglaries at the homes of Justin Bridges and Mark Gummert.

Batterson said someone burglarized an Alliant Energy work vehicle and a piece of Synergy Contracting equipment was stolen on South Third Avenue.

Batterson does not think all of the burglaries are related. However, he said the vehicle burglaries which have occurred in the past week might be the same person.

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Contact Lana Bradstream at 641-753-6611 or lbradstream@timesrepublican.com.