You see its always someone you know, Break-ins are never random. Its usually a set up.


Patrick McGovern | The Jersey Journal

JERSEY CITY ? After a Jersey City woman returned home from a trip to South Jersey and found her Downtown apartment burglarized, it was her daughter's 19-year-old boyfriend who eventually confessed to the crime, police said.

Paul Piotti, 18, of Jersey City is charged with burglary, theft by unlawful taking, and criminal mischief.

Piotti appeared in Central Judicial Processing court in Jersey City on Monday via video link from the Hudson County Correctional Facility in Kearny. Judge Margaret Marley set his bail at $10,000 with a 10 percent cash option.

The victim told police that she returned home Nov. 25 from a trip to South Jersey to visit her sister and found her apartment ransacked. Burgundy wood stain paint was spilled all over the walls and floor of the apartment, and an antique wood dining room table had been scratched with a sharp object, according to a police report.

The woman also discovered that her credit cards, social security card, checkbook and other items had been cut into small pieces, police say. Both bedrooms in the apartment were ?ransacked? and a triangular symbol had been spray painted on a wall, the report says. Also, the woman?s heated toilet seat had been ripped off the toilet, two flat screen televisions had been cracked, and an Apple laptop had been thrown into the kitchen sink, police say.

Missing from the apartment were an another Apple laptop and three flash devices for a digital camera, the report states.

Police say the woman suspected that her 16-year-old daughter was involved in the burglary, saying that she had sent her daughter to live with her father in Florida, and forbidding her to live with her boyfriend, Piotti.

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