AUBURN — A pair of New York men were in custody Friday, two days after they were arrested as suspects in what police describe as an organized retail theft ring.

Police said the men attempted to throw fake identification cards out the window as they were being pulled over by police on Washington Street just before noon Wednesday.

“The tossed items were recovered by police and determined to be fake identification cards that the subjects were attempting to destroy before stopping for police,” according to an Auburn police news release. “In addition to the fake cards, officers located identification cards from a variety of foreign countries.”

Police were making the stop, according to the release, because the vehicle had been sought in connection with a number of retail thefts that have occurred in various parts of the state.

Francisco Mercedes Auburn Police Department

Inside the car police found Francisco Mercedes, 44, of New York City, who was arrested on charges of organized retail theft, theft by deception, falsifying physical evidence, misuse of identification and driving without a license.

Mercedes was taken to the Androscoggin County Jail where he was being held on $6,000 cash bail.

Also in the car, police said, was Hannier Alexander Orozco-Mosquera, 25, who had also been living in New York, but who was said to have entered the United States illegally.

Orozco-Mosquera was turned over to the U.S. Border Patrol, police said. His whereabouts was not known Friday.

Both men had been suspects in a retail crime spree that involved numerous Home Depot stores in central and southern parts of the state where the suspects would use fake identification cards to obtain store credit and make large purchases.

The items purchased, police said, would then be transported to the New York and New Jersey area.

Hannier Alexander Orozco-Mosquera Auburn Police Department

Auburn police have been investigating the thefts for several years in cooperation with other police agencies around the state.

In August 2022, two New York men were arrested as suspects in the ring when Auburn police stopped a cargo van traveling through the city with no lights on.

Police said those suspects, too, had been using falsified U.S. government issued documents to fraudulently obtain retail credit cards, which they used to make large-scale purchases of high-end merchandise at Home Depot and other stores.

In February, police in Brunswick arrested three people from New York who were charged with stealing over-the-counter medications and beauty products from a Hannaford in that city.

When investigators searched the trio’s van, police said, they found $32,000 worth of merchandise that had been stolen from other Maine stores.