Clerks Who Don’t Check Stuck With Bad Checks

It may be the dog days of summer, but fraud never takes a vacation.

Four convenience stores in Ventura have handed over a total of $3,244 in cash to an unidentified woman passing bogus welfare checks, Deputy Dist. Atty. Vinse Gilliam said.

The documents are clever fakes, but fakes nonetheless, rather than real checks that have been altered. They look like they’ve been cranked out on a home computer.

The phony checks all bear the same number, 20-213501, and the same issue date, July 9, 1999. The checks also list a nonexistent address for the payee and are for the same amount, $811.

Gilliam said the counterfeiter clearly knows what a real welfare check looks like. The suspect could be a welfare recipient or a vendor who sells products to the county and receives county-issued checks.

Despite a large number of welfare fraud cases closed in 1998--346 of 365 cases, which resulted in 106 arrests--such scams continue because some merchants are not vigilant enough, Gilliam said.

Businesses should ask for a driver’s license. Surprisingly, some clerks don’t check to see whether the name on the license matches the name on the welfare check.

*

Some fraud is easier to spot.

A bail bondsman and his wife are charged with hiring someone to make the couple’s leased Volkswagen disappear south of the border so they could collect on the insurance, authorities say.

Ojai residents Thomas, 30, and Dianna Esparza, 29, are accused of filing a false insurance claim on their 1996 Jetta, which was dumped in Rosarito, Mexico, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Lisa Lee.

Dianna Esparza is additionally charged with hiring someone to abandon the vehicle and with signing several false claims about the incident, Lee said.

The cops picked up the case when Dianna Esparza filed a police report claiming her car was stolen from a mall in Thousand Oaks on May 18, Lee said.

A day later, she went to her insurance company to file a claim for the loss.

A week later, the insurer received word from Mexican authorities that the car was in storage at a Rosarito towing yard after being ticketed in Rosarito as an abandoned vehicle on May 16--two days before it was reported stolen.

The insurance company has a liaison who works in Mexico and searches for abandoned cars, Lee said.

“In auto fraud cases, in general, people can’t afford to make their payments and/or they want to make a little extra money,” Lee said.

In the case of a leased vehicle, an insurance payoff can sometimes be enough to cover remaining car payments and leave an extra few thousand dollars in cash, Lee said.

Lee’s office handles about half a dozen car-dumping cases a year.

In the last such case, a Simi Valley couple was sent to jail for 150 days and ordered to pay $10,000 in restitution after hiring three teen boys to push their car off a cliff, Lee said.

That couple was caught when the boys bragged of their caper to friends, authorities said.

*

Two Thousand Oaks women who chased off thieves last month in separate incidents might appear to be heroes, but police say they are lucky they didn’t get hurt.

In the first case, a 44-year-old woman was about to drive away from a parking lot on Thousand Oaks Boulevard when she was confronted by a man who told her she had a nail in one of her tires, police said.

When the woman got out to inspect, a second man leaned into her vehicle and snatched a handful of her credit cards from her purse. The victim saw the theft and immediately grabbed her precious plastic back from him, police said.

The pair hopped into a car and sped off, narrowly missing the woman as she tried to block their escape with her body. Police are still searching for the would-be thieves.

In the other case, an 18-year-old woman who heard pounding at her door went downstairs to find two men standing in her house. When she confronted them, they ran off. Two men were later arrested after a high-speed chase topping 90 mph. Both were charged with first-degree burglary and remained jailed Sunday, according to sheriff’s deputies.

One of the men, a prison parolee named Michael Hirohata, 30, is a career criminal with a rap sheet that includes convictions for battery and robbery. The other man, Jose Cardenas, 31, has a record of minor offenses.

“I don’t recommend that anybody confront any crook, because they may be confronting the wrong one,” said Sheriff’s Det. Pat Dain. “As a general rule, it’s better to go someplace safe and call police right away.”

*

It’s one of the oldest and creakiest plot devices in detective fiction: the crook who returns to the scene of the crime, only to be caught.

One alleged thief apparently hasn’t been keeping up with his reading.

Ventura cops responded to a burglar alarm at a leather boutique on Main Street about 4:30 a.m. last week. When they arrived, they found the door pried open, Ventura Police Lt. Bill Bogner said.

The store’s owner came over and locked the place up. But two hours later, the store was hit again, Bogner said.

Aaron James Pierce, 34, was arrested on suspicion of burglary when officers allegedly saw him running from the store about 7 a.m. with an armful of leather jackets.

When cops searched Pierce’s home, they found a leather jacket the man had allegedly stolen the first time, Bogner said.

There’s not a big pawn market for leather wear, but Bogner said friends and family members of coat thieves will often pony up $50 for a genuine bomber jacket worth a couple hundred dollars.

“He’s not the brightest star in the universe,” Bogner said of the attempted double dip.

Pierce was being held in jail without bail, because police say the alleged burglary violated his parole.

*

Holly Wolcott can be reached by e-mail at [email protected]