Authorities say a 27-year-old Dawsonville man they arrested last week is responsible for nearly half of Dawson County’s burglaries this year.

Jordan Paul Adams of Clifton Drive was taken into custody Friday after spending the previous day pointing out 32 homes he admitted to burglarizing in Dawson and Hall counties.

At least nine of the homes are in Dawson. He is charged with six felony burglary counts.

Dawson County Sheriff’s Capt. Tony Wooten said additional charges are likely.

“We’re still working on a couple of the cases,” he said. “One house he burglarized didn’t even know they had been [broken] into because he did very little damage making entry.”

Adams was released on a $60,000 bond Monday night, according to sheriff’s records.

Investigators said Adams broke into random homes and took jewelry and pain medication.

“There was really no rhyme or reason to the houses he hit,” Wooten said. “His method was to approach the house, see if somebody was there, with a bogus story if someone approached him. If not, he made entry.”

Lt. Ray Goodie said it will be difficult to measure the value of what was taken because Adams doesn’t remember all the items he took from every house.

“It’s hard to come up with an actual number, because the victims really don’t know the exact amount that was taken either,” he said.

Goodie said Adams “left the homes as neat as possible. You could barely tell he was there.”

Adams’ arrest in Dawson County followed an investigation in Hall County, where he had reportedly pawned a stolen piece of jewelry at a Gainesville business.

“When they saw he had pawned an item in their county that they could identify through one of their burglaries, they contacted us,” Wooten said.

Investigators said money appeared to be the motive of Adams, who burglarized the homes alone.

Goodie said officers do not anticipate recovering the stolen jewelry. He recommended that residents document valuable belongings through photographs.

“Jewelry doesn’t have serial numbers,” he said.

In an unrelated incident, a local teenager was arrested April 1 after authorities said he used knowledge of the burglaries in his neighborhood to cover a theft he committed at his family’s Mayapple Glen home.

The teen was charged with theft by deception and theft by taking after he pawned a digital musical player he had previously reported stolen from his vehicle.

Both charges are misdemeanors. He was released April 2 after posting $6,000 bond.

“He had also sold jewelry that had belonged to his mom as well,” Goodie said. “We found that along with the i-Pod.”

According to Sheriff Billy Carlisle’s recently released 2010 annual report, theft and drug-related crimes rose in 2010 while the rate of other crimes fell.

A crime suppression unit was created earlier this year in an attempt to stem the increase.