Businessman Accused of Buying Stolen Property

A Woodland Hills man police say has been buying stolen goods from heroin addicts for at least four years was arrested Monday after officers said they found stolen goods, including 50 cases of liquor worth about $10,000, at his home and business.

Phillip Dargento, 57, was taken into custody at his business, Franjak’s Auto Body in Van Nuys, after a tip from an informant that he had been buying goods from drug users, said Sgt. Don Kitchen of the Valley Bureau Major Crimes Task Force. Dargento was being held at Van Nuys Jail on suspicion of receiving stolen property, Kitchen said.

Among the property officers seized at Dargento’s home and business, Kitchen said, were $200 worth of stolen meat, a stolen car stereo worth $1,500 and several handguns and automatic weapons. It was not immediately determined if the guns had been stolen, he said.

Kitchen said 50 cases of liquor were stacked in Dargento’s kitchen and in a shack in back of his house. “There was just hundreds of bottles. We tried to fit all the cases into a van, and the van wouldn’t budge,” Kitchen said. “There also was so much meat that we think it might belong to a warehouse, although we think it comes from about eight different stores.”

Kitchen identified Dargento as one of the principal legitimate businessmen in the Valley who purchase stolen merchandise from heroin addicts.

“These addicts can steal $200 or $300 worth of meat and sell it to these businessmen for $40, enough for them to get a fix,” Kitchen said.

Police conducted an undercover investigation of Dargento two years ago, “but we’ve never been able get anything on him,” said Sgt. Paul Mattson of the Major Crimes Task Force. “These receivers only buy from people they know, and when our officers conducted an investigation to see if he would buy goods from them, he didn’t do it.”