Police catch suspected burglar with help from his Twitter account

It’s one thing to tweet out when you're at the ball game or a concert. But when you're allegedly robbing an apartment?

That is what a Virginia man is accused of doing. Police in Washington, D.C. allege that Thomas Matthew Collodel burglarized a hotel, a restaurant, the front desk of an apartment building and other Northwest Washington businesses, according to The Washington Post. The burglaries allegedly occurred from Dec. 30 to Jan. 24.

Police said their investigation was helped when the 33-year-old signed onto his Twitter account from a computer on the concierge desk of a Northwest Washington luxury apartment building in the middle of the night. He is accused of burglarizing several of the luxury apartments in that buildilng.

A drawer behind the concierge desk had been tampered with, police said, and surveillance video showed a man using the computer, the newspaper reports. Police said Collodel’s Twitter account also had been accessed and pictures on the account matched the person seen on the video.

Collodel was arrested Saturday and has since been charged with five counts of burglary. He was ordered detained until a preliminary hearing in D.C. Superior Court on Thursday.