When investigators walked into a home in Oakland this month, they didn't find a burglar — they found the buyer: at least 500 power tools, a stolen forklift, a stolen ATV and a firearm, allegedly the inventory of the man prosecutors say bankrolled a teenage burglary crew that hit dozens of Contra Costa homes.

Wuillian Cordova-Cubias, 37, faces multiple felonies as the alleged fence at the center of a burglary series that the Contra Costa County District Attorney and Concord police describe very differently — a gap that matters because it defines how large the operation actually was. The case is a rare public look at the economics of organized theft in the East Bay: not lone break-ins, but a supply chain in which juveniles allegedly did the stealing and an adult buyer allegedly turned garage tools into cash.

The arrest that closed the loop happened at a house, not a job site.

On Aug. 5, Concord police, Oakland police and the U.S. Marshals Service served a search warrant at the Oakland home of Cordova-Cubias, according to the office of Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton. Inside, authorities said, were at least 500 power tools alongside suspected stolen survey equipment, pipe-inspection gear, and vehicles. Concord police, in an account carried by ABC7 through Bay City News, said the items recovered from Cordova-Cubias's residence — the tools, a stolen ATV, a stolen forklift and an unregistered firearm among them — carried a total value of about $250,000.

Cordova-Cubias was charged with receiving stolen property, two counts of receiving a stolen motor vehicle, unlawful firearm activity and conspiracy to commit a crime with juvenile co-conspirators, the DA's office said. The two stolen vehicles were a utility ATV and a forklift. Prosecutors said every count carries sentencing enhancements.

The alleged thieves, according to investigators, were kids. Concord police concluded a group of juveniles was behind the burglaries. Richmond police had arrested the juvenile suspects in May in connection with a vehicle-theft investigation, and authorities later determined the juveniles were part of the fencing operation Cordova-Cubias allegedly led, according to the DA's office. A fencing operation, as prosecutors describe it, buys stolen goods from thieves and resells them.

Where the two agencies telling this story diverge is in scale — and it's worth noting, because the numbers are the case.

The DA's office frames it as roughly 35 burglaries in Concord's Ygnacio and Clayton Valley neighborhoods between April and July, producing five felony charges. Concord police, in the account carried by ABC7 through Bay City News, put the footprint far wider: 37 vehicle and residential burglaries in Concord plus about 40 more across Contra Costa and Solano counties — more than 70 in total — between late April and June.

The Concord account also describes escalation the DA's summary leaves out. Thieves broke into vehicles in the early-morning hours, police said, then used garage-door remotes found inside to open the homes attached to them, hunting for power tools. In May, surveillance video captured a suspect pointing a firearm at the interior door between a garage and a residence, police said. During one burglary, the crew allegedly made off with 14 firearms from a garage.

The two framings aren't necessarily contradictory — the DA charges what it can prove in one county, while police describe the full investigative picture across jurisdictions — but the distance between "about 35" and "more than 70" is the difference between a neighborhood problem and a regional one. It also underscores how the same case can look modest in a charging document and sprawling in a police briefing.

What the accounts agree on is the shape of the operation: a young crew allegedly feeding a single adult buyer. In the account carried by ABC7 through Bay City News, Concord police said the Oakland man had been identified as purchasing tools from the suspects "often immediately following the burglaries" — a detail investigators used to distinguish a standing buyer from an ordinary resale.

The juveniles' names were withheld. Cordova-Cubias's case now moves through Contra Costa County Superior Court, where the enhancement-laden charges prosecutors filed will test how hard California's system comes down on the buyer, rather than the kids who allegedly did the breaking and entering.