A woman and her family had their home broken into by a Facebook ‘friend’ who saw her post online that she was on vacation, police have said.
According to Daily Mail, Stacey Grant (pictured)was with her family in Las Vegas when her mother received a call from police that their home in Fontana, California had been burglarized.
In astonishing luck, police officers happened to be surveilling the area at the time of the break in on Tuesday and were able to stop and arrest Grant’s acquaintance Michael Baston, 21 (pictured right), and two other men, Philip McKnight, 32, and Tyrone Gibson, 20.
Grant told NBC Los Angeles that she regularly shared her whereabouts with her Facebook friends and had excitedly written, ‘Just made it to Las Vegas with my family’ on Monday.
She said that Baston texted her asking how long her family was away for and how the trip was going, and she said that she innocently believed they were just catching up.
But within hours of their text conversation, police called the family to let them know their home had been burglarized by a group of men.
‘It was hurtful,’ Grant said. ‘My whole room was trashed, there were clothes everywhere. My bed was gone.’
Authorities said that the brazen trio had parked a U-Haul truck outside the home and filled it up items, including flat screen televisions and furniture.
Neighbors, who did not know the family was on vacation, told KTLA that they had assumed the men were relatives of the homeowners.
But officers were in the area, which had been hit with a spate of burglaries in recent weeks.
They spotted the men loading up the van and when they approached them, one of the suspects ran off, confirming their suspicions, KTLA reported.
All three men were arrested on suspicion of burglary, possession of stolen property and conspiracy, and the family returned from their trip immediately.
‘It serves as a reminder to be very careful of what you post on social media sites,’ Martha Guzman-Hurtado, a spokeswoman for the Fontana Police Department, told NBC.
Grant said she has learned her lesson and that Baston is no longer her ‘friend’.
‘I don’t care about him,’ she said. ‘He can rot for all I care.’
