A man arrested for allegedly stealing a package from the front of a Tarzana home is suspected with an accomplice of using a sophisticated method of tracking delivery trucks to net “a mass of stolen property,” police said Wednesday.
Ramon Sean Horton, 32, was arrested on suspicion of taking the package from the home of Tarzana resident Rick Deckman on Oct. 8. He had gotten a phone alert that UPS had delivered a package to his front porch, but it wasn’t there when he got home that evening.
A scan of Deckman’s home video system showed a man taking the delivered package from the porch and driving away in a rented pickup truck that was tracked to a woman in Northridge, said Senior Lead Officer Daryl Scoggins of the Los Angeles Police Department.
A warrant was served the night of Oct. 8 at the Northridge home of Olga Efimova, 26, who had been detained a few blocks from the house along with Horton.
“Detectives seized credit cards in the names of at least four other people, and noted a cache of merchandise, some of it still in the wrapper,” according to an LAPD statement.
“They found Deckman’s stolen package, plus packages from three other persons living in Tarzana and Reseda,” as well as “a sophisticated operation of tracking delivery trucks to coordinate thefts.”
“We were incredulous when we saw the suspect on video following the UPS truck in a rented U-Haul pickup,” said Capt. Paul Vernon, commanding officer of the LAPD’s West Valley Station. “Once at the suspect’s house, we found they were tracking UPS trucks on a phone app, too.”
Horton and Efimova were booked on suspicion of “charges related to theft by means of using another’s credit card access.”
Horton, who is currently on probation, may also be charged with mail and package theft while Efimova may be charged additionally with methamphetamine possession and car embezzlement for failing to return the rented pickup truck, police said.
Horton was being held at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown Los Angeles in lieu of $395,000 bail and was due in court Wednesday.
Efimova, whose bail was set at $20,000, was released from custody on Oct. 9 and is next due in court on Nov. 6 in San Fernando, according to the sheriff’s department..
“It was a really great break for us,” Scoggins said of Deckman’s home security video. “It’s always a challenge to catch these porch pirates because there’s rarely any leads.”
— City News Service