Police Stage 2 Raids, Arrest Alleged Leader in Huge Credit Fraud

Oxnard police said Friday they have broken up a fraud scheme led by a Van Nuys man that bilked wholesalers around the nation of at least $500,000 in merchandise through unpaid credit orders.

A task force of three law-enforcement agencies raided a Canoga Park warehouse where about 33,000 pounds of the merchandise was stored, Oxnard police Chief Robert P. Owens said.

Then, Friday morning, Oxnard police raided a store in an Oxnard shopping center said to be the front for the scheme, confiscating about 7,000 pounds of additional merchandise, he said. The goods ranged from television sets and furniture to chocolate-covered cherries, Owens said.

The alleged ringleader, Thomas Leonard Balla, 22, was arrested Wednesday outside his Van Nuys home on suspicion of grand theft. Balla was being held in the Ventura County Jail Friday night in lieu of $250,000 bail.

Owens said Balla purchased a Long Beach appliance repair shop last December and used its good credit rating to order goods for the Oxnard store, known as “Knoll’s,” which was not open to the public and never sold any merchandise. Instead, the stolen goods were taken to the Canoga Park warehouse, apparently for eventual sale, he said. The warehouse was raided Wednesday evening.

Owens said Balla used the credit scheme to get goods from at least 160 wholesalers across the United States and Canada.

Police said the investigation began in April after a tip from Santa Barbara County sheriff’s deputies, who found stolen merchandise suspected to have been stolen in boxes marked with the name of Balla’s Oxnard business.

Irate wholesalers seeking payment were calling Balla’s Oxnard shop Friday morning, even as detectives catalogued merchandise seized there, Owens said. He estimated the value of stolen merchandise as in the “hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Owens said there may be more arrests.