Fighting Crime For Over 30 years

The Crimes

In 1974 Bob Cochrane, the current president and founder of Guardcom.net, was a deputy sheriff in the State of Maine. It was that year when he met Bert Magnus who was both the chief of police of the town of Hancock Maine, and the owner of local two way radio business in that community.

That also was the year when professional thieves where targeting summer cottages and mansions along the Maine coast, and stealing a large quantity of priceless antiques from each home. Even though some of the homes that were burglarized had alarm systems, the burglars were defeating the alarms by cutting the phone lines before breaking into the homes. In the 1970's the only alarm equipment available for homeowners in rural areas utilized a telephone dialer to dial out messages to a central monitoring station. When the lines were cut, the systems could not dial out a signal.

As weeks and months passed, the number of thefts of antiques from coastal homes kept mounting. A task force was formed by area police departments and sheriff departments to exchange intelligence with the hopes of learning the identities of the burglars. The task force had some success in narrowing the list of suspects, but the number of burglaries kept increasing. The investigators theorized that they were dealing with a very professional group of burglars being led by a well known ringleader, but they had no proof. The intruders were not leaving any evidence at the crime scenes, and the police felt that the stolen goods were probably being transported out of state.

The Trap Is Set

One day, Bob traveled to Bert's radio shop to get the two-way radio in his cruiser repaired. The conversation quickly turned to discussing the large number of burglaries that were occurring. Bert mentioned to Bob that he had just hooked up an electronic trap at a home in his town. What Bert did was ingenious. He placed a modified police walkie talkie radio in the attic of a vacant home which was full of antiques. He also placed a pressure sensitive switch mat under a rug in the hallway of the home, and wired the mat to the radio. Each time someone walked over the rug it caused the radio to send out a brief signal which Bert could hear at his shop.

One day the walkie talkie stated sending signals from the vacant house. Bert called the county dispatcher who sent two cruisers to the home. When the deputy sheriffs arrived they arrested four burglars who were in the process of loading antiques into two pickup trucks. The burglars had cut the phone lines, but the radio was the reason for their apprehension. One of the arrested burglars turned out to be the ringleader. The burglars went to trial, were found guilty, and each sentenced to long terms in prison. The crime wave ended.

The Rest of The Story

After the arrests, Bert refined his invention and formed a new company called Radioguard Corp. He quickly built a successful business installing radio signal alarm systems in homes and businesses in his community. In 1976 Bob left the sheriff's department to start his own alarm company in Bangor Maine. Bob installed systems which utilized the Radioguard transmitters. In 1980 Bert sold his alarm business to Bob, and Bert began a long and successful career with the US Customs Service. Bob continued selling the Radioguard systems for 17years, which were monitored at his own 24 hour central monitoring facility.

2007

Bob Cochrane is the founder and president of Guardcom, a security company that sells alarm systems which utilize cellular radio transmitters to send alarm signals over the AT&T wireless network to a 24 hour monitoring station. Guardcom's system uses equipment manufactured by Honeywell, which is specially configured so that it does not require any installation. If a burglar cut the phone lines, the signal will still get through. His web site is: www.Guardcom.net

Bert Magnus recently retired from the US Customs Service and is currently a licensed Maine Private investigator, and owner and manager of Magnus PI Investigations. He is on the board of directors of the Maine Licensed Private Investigators Association. He is also a security consultant specializing in business security and internet fraud. Bert created a web site where victims of internet fraud can seek help from a team of private investigators located throughout the USA. The web site is: www.FraudTeam.org