‘Panty bandit’ is sentenced for breaking into adult and lingerie stores
A 35-year-old Canoga Park man with a yen for lingerie and adult DVDs was sentenced to more than two years in prison Friday following a string of break-ins that earned him the waggish sobriquet of “panty bandit.”
Carlos Oliva was sentenced to two years and eight months in custody for breaking into several adult or lingerie stores in the San Fernando Valley and fleeing each with thousands of dollars worth of lingerie and DVDs, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.
Oliva had pleaded no contest Jan. 6 to three felony counts of second-degree commercial burglary, prosecutors said. As part of that plea, the defendant agreed to pay restitution to nine burglary victims, prosecutors said.
A Los Angeles police sergeant caught Oliva in the act Sept. 29, authorities say.
According to police, Oliva had broken into Excitement, an adult store on Ventura Boulevard in Woodland Hills. When the store’s burglary alarm went off, the sergeant found him outside the premises, police said.
The business was one of at least 11 lingerie stores burglarized from January to September 2016, police said. Many of the break-ins were committed on the same dates, and some stores were burglarized more than once, prosecutors said.
Oliva was probably reselling the stolen goods, said LAPD Det. Merrill Dunn.
“His penchant for breaking into lingerie shops told us this was a matter of organized retail crime,” Dunn said, “which means he’s reselling the merchandise to fences or shipping it out of the country.”
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