When Travis Charles Bales was looking to unload a PlayStation video game system stolen in a burglary, he went to a pawn shop, authorities said.

Hall County Sheriff’s investigators say Bales made the mistake of leaving his ATM card inside a home he burglarized on Athens Highway, and that eventually led them to the same name on paperwork required of anyone who pawns an item. The game system was recovered at a Jesse Jewell Parkway pawn shop and Bales was later arrested.

“We haven’t seen a lot of stolen items in pawn shops, but we’re starting to see more now,” Capt. Woodrow Tripp said. “We’re seeing more (burglars) pawn things.”

Already a common focus of property crime investigations, pawn shop transactions are now getting increased scrutiny in a time of more burglaries.

The Hall County Sheriff’s Office has started a partnership with city police departments to share information investigators routinely collect in the form of “pawn slips” from pawn shops.

Under state law, people pawning items must provide their name and driver’s license information. The Hall County Sheriff’s Office already collected pawn slips from the shops in its jurisdiction. An agreement now is in place with Oakwood and Flowery Branch to build a comprehensive database of pawn information throughout the county, and the sheriff’s office is finalizing an agreement with Gainesville.

“If someone stole something in the city and pawned it in the county, we wouldn’t necessarily know it and vice versa,” Col. Jeff Strickland said.

“So now we’re working to pay closer attention to that, with an analyst who is available to all the police departments in
Hall County.”

Bill LaPointe, owner of Lanier Jewelry and Loan and a pawn shop operator for 25 years, said there are “minimal items that are stolen that end up in a pawn shop.”

“We have you on video, we have your driver’s license information, we have your name and address,” LaPointe said. “If you stole something, you wouldn’t take it to a place where they’re going to have your ID.”

Tripp said that’s not been the case lately. Since the sheriff’s office put a new burglary action plan into place, three burglary cases have been solved in part through pawn shop traces.

“Sometime burglars will take that chance, or they also may give the items to family and friends who will pawn them,” Tripp said.

And in many cases, if the owner never records a serial number, there’s no way to tell an item is stolen when it’s pawned.

Tripp said the new pawn shop initiative is “another part of our multi-faceted approach to burglaries.”

“We want to stop the thief from having a market for stolen items,” Tripp said.