Interpreting business hit by thieves twice in one morning in downtown Portland

By Drew Marine

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    PORTLAND, Oregon (KPTV) — Early Thursday morning, thieves were caught on camera getting into the Telelanguage office in downtown Portland.

Telelanguage is a business that provides interpreters for people who are deaf or non-English speakers calling 911 or other customer service lines.

“They had keys that they had fobs to get in the door,” operations manager Lyndon Beckner said. “It wasn’t just a forced entry type of thing. The people who took our stuff looked like they had been in the office suite before or knew people who had been. They came in and very quickly knew where to go and what to take.”

Surveillance video shows two people walking into the office and immediately taking a rolling suitcase with a projector inside to load up on a cart. One of them then unlocked a door, taking desktops and other equipment to stack onto the cart.

Beckner said everything they took is worth at least $10,000. He said this won’t impact their work.

“Laptops, iPads, equipment, specialized equipment for trade shows,” Beckner said. “Things that we’ll have to, of course, replace so we can continue to market our company.”

Even more concerning, Beckner said the thieves left and came back more than an hour later. This time they stole sensitive personal information someone was temporarily keeping in their desk drawer.

“Unfortunately, one of our employees had social security cards, they had death certificates for their parents, credit card statements, enough personal information to really do some damage,” he said.

The Portland Police Bureau took a report about this, but Becker said there’s not much they can do. If you recognize the people in the video, he asked you call PPB.

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