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 — until now, authorities said.
On Tuesday, the Ventura County district attorney’s 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’ history.
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.
Several law enforcement agencies worked together to take down the theft crew through “Operation Kill Switch,” which arrested 14 people on Aug. 14, nine of whom have since been charged.
The criminal enterprise was allegedly led by David Ahl of Woodland Hills, who now 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.
Ahl is accused of directing theft crews to seize high-value items at Home Depots — such as breakers, dimmers, switches and outlets — that he would then resell them through his electronics storefront in Tarzana in a technique known as fencing.
“His crews of thieves, known as boosters, stole merchandise from the Home Depot’s stores, sometimes hitting every Home Depot in Ventura County in a single day,” said Ventura County Sheriff Jim Fryhoff at Tuesday’s news conference. “Then 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.”
The crime ring was, in part, a family affair, prosecutors said.
Ahl’s 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.
Ahl’s 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.
Five prolific boosters in the ring were also arrested and face felony charges.
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 between $6,000 and $10,000 in merchandise at a time, prosecutors said.
Surveillance camera footage shared by the D.A.’s 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.
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’s 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.
During Tuesday’s news conference, Sheriff 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.
“Without this law, we would be prosecuting common crimes by the same defendants in multiple jurisdictions, a costly and time-consuming undertaking,” he said. “However, because of this legislation, Ventura County has consolidated the Los Angeles Home Depot theft charges into the 48-count criminal complaint.
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.
“This is the start of efforts to go after these large crews,” he said. “They thought they were sophisticated, they thought they could hide. Today’s announcement of these charges shows vastly differently.”
The post Massive Home Depot crime ring pulled off more than 600 SoCal thefts, D.A. says appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
