In 2018, burglary crews started hitting homes in nice neighborhoods in and around Thousand Oaks.
When Ventura County sheriff’s investigators started digging, they found the cases had three things in common: The suspects they arrested were foreign nationals, mostly from Chile, in the United States on short-term tourist visas. They targeted homes that backed up to open space, breaking in through sliding glass doors. And they all drove cars rented from the same place, a lot in Pacoima called Driver Power Rental.
That was the start of a six-year investigation that culminated Wednesday morning with the arrest of six people, including a couple from Santa Clarita who owned Driver Power Rental and who authorities say masterminded a “crime tourism” network that stole at least $35 million in goods and cash from homes and businesses all over the United States.
The six suspects were indicted Aug. 1 by a federal grand jury, as was the car rental business itself. The indictment was unsealed Wednesday after they were arrested.
They face a total of 46 federal felony counts, including wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy to transport stolen property across state lines. Each of the wire fraud and money-laundering counts carries a sentence of up to 20 years in federal prison, and the other counts carry smaller sentences.
A few hours after those arrests, top law enforcement officials from Ventura County stood alongside Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass at a news conference at the FBI’s offices on Wilshire Boulevard in West L.A., joined by police and prosecutors from Los Angeles and Orange counties and the top federal prosecutor and FBI official for the region.
Busting the theft ring, they said, will help make homes and businesses safer from a yearslong wave of burglaries.
“Neighborhoods have been terrorized and terrified at what has been happening,” Bass said. “This is a major step forward, and I hope it brings relief to our neighbors in the Los Angeles area and in Southern California.”
The chief defendants in the case are Juan Carlos Thola-Duran, 57, and his girlfriend, Ana Maria Arriagada, 41, who live together in the Canyon Country area of Santa Clarita.
Four other people were indicted and are accused of helping the couple run the theft ring: Thola’s son, John Thola of Canoga Park; Patricia Enderton of Northridge; Miguel Angel Barajas of Northridge; and Federico Jorge Triebel IV of Woodland Hills.
The business Thola and Arriagada owned, Driver Power Rental, was “no ordinary car rental business,” said U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada, the chief federal prosecutor for the greater Los Angeles region. “This business catered only to crooks.”
Most of the thieves who patronized Driver Power Rental came from Chile, which is the only country in Latin America whose citizens can automatically get 90-day tourist visas to visit the United States, Estrada said. They always gave false identification to rent cars, and they often chose luxury models, to better blend in to affluent neighborhoods while they cased the homes and businesses they planned to rob.
Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko called the operation “in essence, the Hertz rental car business for thieves, furnishing them with cars that entered Ventura County for one purpose: to hit homes and steal from businesses.”
The business also operated at locations in Van Nuys under the names Car Deals and More and Enterprise LA Rental, according to the federal indictment.
As the investigation was getting underway in 2018, an undercover officer posed as a legitimate car rental customer and walked into Driver Power Rentals. The business refused to rent to him, the indictment states, “after learning that the customer had not been referred by someone in the conspiracy and that the customer had a valid driver’s license.”
A few years later, an informant working with the FBI visited the rental lot and was told by an employee that cars were $500 per week, and the business’ owners would buy gift cards for 75% of their retail value.
Prosecutors claim Thola and Arriagada did much more than provide getaway cars. They “acted as quarterbacks for a massive team of eager thieves,” Estrada said, directing people to travel all over the U.S. to steal cash, luxury handbags, jewelry, credit cards, gift cards and other goods, and then fencing the goods and paying the thieves a percentage of the profits.
In one case, thieves broke into a jewelry store in the San Francisco Bay area and stole more than $5 million worth of jewelry and watches, according to the indictment. They also broke into homes, usually when the homeowners were not around, and took cash and jewelry.
They stole credit cards from cars and purses and immediately took them to stores like Target and Best Buy to buy electronics, gift cards and other high-priced goods before the cards could be canceled, the indictment states. In one case, in 2021, they broke into a car parked at a trailhead in Newbury Park, stole credit cards and tried to use them to buy $1,600 worth of jewelry at The Oaks mall.
Stolen goods were handed off to the ringleaders and their associates or mailed to a FedEx store in Sherman Oaks, where Barajas would pick them up, the indictment states.
Prosecutors have identified at least 120 thefts connected to the group, though there could be many more, Estrada said. Ventura County Sheriff Jim Fryhoff said that 130 people in Ventura County alone have been arrested for crimes that fit the pattern, and “the vast majority” were driving cars from Driver Power Rental.
Most of the cases detailed in the indictment were in California, but there were also alleged thefts in Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, New Jersey, Missouri and Colorado.
The total value of the goods taken was at least $35 million, Estrada said. The indictment claims that Thola cleared about $5.5 million by selling the goods, including $5.1 million that he sent to bank accounts controlled by the other people arrested on Wednesday.
The indictment alleges Thola and the other defendants used the money to buy four properties in Los Angeles and Santa Clarita, along with cars and horses. Thola’s property in Canyon Country sits on the outskirts of town and appears to be across the street from a horse ranch.
Akil Davis, the assistant FBI director in charge of the Los Angeles field office, said the federal government is in the process of seizing “25 vehicles, several properties and possibly even some horses.”
Thola, Arriagada, Barajas and Enderton are also charged with defrauding the federal government by filing false applications to obtain about $275,000 in COVID-19 business relief loans. They wrote checks to their associates and passed them off as payroll expenses, and when their applications were denied, they immediately reapplied using different false information about their businesses, the indictment states.
The home break-ins in Ventura County were among the first crimes tied to Driver Power Rental. Fryhoff said that after his agency discovered the ties among their suspects, they alerted the FBI, and that led to the formation of the multi-agency regional task force that oversaw the case.
“These investigations usually target a spoke in a very large wheel. In this case, we targeted the entire wheel, and that is why an investigation like this takes many years,” said Davis, the leader of the region’s FBI presence.
“We have an amazing team,” Fryhoff said during the news conference. “This is what happens when nobody cares who takes credit for it.”
Tony Biasotti is an investigative and watchdog reporter for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at [email protected]. This story was made possible by a grant from the Ventura County Community Foundation’s Fund to Support Local Journalism.
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Publish date : 2024-08-28 16:47:00
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