For years, a sophisticated retail crime ring plundered Home Depots across Southern California, pulling off more than 600 thefts and netting an estimated $10 million worth of merchandise without consequences \u2014 until now, authorities said.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, the Ventura County district attorney\u2019s office announced the filing of a 48-count criminal complaint against nine alleged key players in what Home Depot says is the largest targeted theft ring in the business\u2019 history. <\/p>\n
The retail crime ring targeted 71 Home Depot locations in Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, sometimes hitting the same stores multiple times a day, prosecutors allege. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Goods that were stolen from Home Depot locations were allegedly fenced by David Ahl through Arya Wholesale, his Tarzana business.<\/p>\n
(Ventura County district attorney\u2019s office)<\/p>\n
Several law enforcement agencies worked together to take down the theft crew through \u201cOperation Kill Switch,\u201d which arrested 14 people on Aug. 14, nine of whom have since been charged, authorities said.<\/p>\n
The criminal enterprise was allegedly led by David Ahl of Woodland Hills, who faces 45 felony counts, including conspiracy, organized retail theft, grand theft, receiving stolen property and money laundering, prosecutors said. If convicted as charged, he faces up to 32 years in prison.<\/p>\n
Ahl is accused of directing theft crews to seize high-value items at Home Depots \u2014 such as breakers, dimmers, switches and outlets \u2014 that he would then resell through his electronics storefront in Tarzana in a technique known as fencing. <\/p>\n
\u201cHis crews of thieves, known as boosters, stole merchandise from the Home Depot\u2019s stores, sometimes hitting every Home Depot in Ventura County in a single day,\u201d said Ventura County Sheriff Jim Fryhoff at Tuesday\u2019s news conference. \u201cThen the boosters would deliver the stolen items in trash bags or Home Depot boxes to his business or to his home, where he paid them in cash.\u201d<\/p>\n
The crime ring was, in part, a family affair, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
Ahl\u2019s brother-in-law, Omid Abrishamkar of Calabasas, is accused of helping sell the stolen merchandise through EBay and faces 11 felony counts related to money laundering and reselling stolen property.<\/p>\n
Ahl\u2019s ex-wife, Lorena Solis of Downey, is accused of getting in on the action by running a nearly identical fencing business in the Los Angeles area alongside her partner, Enrique Neira Moreno of Downey. They each face eight felony counts.<\/p>\n
Five prolific boosters in the ring were also arrested and face felony charges, authorities said.<\/p>\n
They include Jose Banuelos Guerrero of South Gate, Edwin Rivera of Los Angeles and Eber Bonilla Lopez of Pomona, who are accused of working together to commit thefts on a daily basis, often stealing $6,000 to $10,000 in merchandise at a time, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Ventura County Sheriff\u2019s Office said it had seized at least $3.7 million in stolen Home Depot property and more than $800,000 in suspected illicit money from suspects\u2019 accounts.<\/p>\n
(Ventura County district attorney\u2019s office)<\/p>\n
Surveillance camera footage released by the district attorney\u2019s office shows Bonilla-Lopez filling his jacket pockets with electric breakers from a Home Depot and using a pole to swipe boxes full of electrical components from the top shelves.<\/p>\n
A second alleged boosting crew consisting of Erlin Hernandez Lopez and Denny Gomez, both of Pomona, are charged with three felony counts of conspiracy to commit retail theft.<\/p>\n
Home Depot estimates that the crew is collectively responsible for more than $10 million in stolen merchandise. Since the Aug. 14 arrests, the Ventura County Sheriff\u2019s Office has seized at least $3.7 million in stolen Home Depot property and more than $800,000 in suspected illicit money from accounts belonging to Ahl and Abrishamkar.<\/p>\n
During Tuesday\u2019s news conference, Fryhoff praised Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin (D-Thousand Oaks) for authoring Assembly Bill 1779, which was signed into law last year and allows retail crimes that occur across multiple counties to be consolidated into a single criminal filing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout this law, we would be prosecuting common crimes by the same defendants in multiple jurisdictions, a costly and time-consuming undertaking,\u201d he said. \u201cHowever, because of this legislation, Ventura County has consolidated the Los Angeles Home Depot theft charges into the 48-count criminal complaint.<\/p>\n
L.A. County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman also praised the bill and said that cracking down on retail crime is a top priority for his office.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the start of efforts to go after these large crews,\u201d he said. \u201cThey thought they were sophisticated, they thought they could hide. Today\u2019s announcement of these charges shows vastly differently.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For years, a sophisticated retail crime ring plundered Home Depots across Southern California, pulling off more than 600…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":179332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[68964,101410,101414,27171,51,2321,36835,2444,12813,50,1812,101413,6617,101412,101411,52,5618,33077],"class_list":{"0":"post-179331","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-booster","9":"tag-david-ahl","10":"tag-eber-bonilla-lopez","11":"tag-felony-count","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-home-depot","14":"tag-home-depots","15":"tag-los-angeles-times","16":"tag-merchandise","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-office","19":"tag-omid-abrishamkar","20":"tag-prosecutor","21":"tag-sophisticated-retail-crime-ring","22":"tag-theft-crew","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-tuesday","25":"tag-ventura-county"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115099962390490054","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}