Police Arrest 14 in Breakup of Big Counterfeiting, Forgery Ring

A major Southern California counterfeiting and forgery ring, which investigators say was run by a 27-year-old woman who was convicted in 1976 for killing her parents in Marin County, has been broken and 14 people arrested, Los Angeles police announced Tuesday.

The alleged ringleader, Marlena Olive, was arrested Thursday after trying to elude police by hiding in the garden of a West Los Angeles hotel where she had been staying, Detective Dick Vail said.

During the arrests and follow-up investigation, police seized several thousand counterfeit checks, more than 200 stolen credit cards, expensive equipment used for counterfeiting, personal computers and police manuals that describe how criminals forge and counterfeit, Vail said.

Police said members of the ring would purchase expensive merchandise with the phony checks or credit cards, and then resell the items. Investigators, who had been working on the case for more than six months, would not speculate on how much merchandise may have been bought by the operation, except to say that the evidence ranges “from cars to brooms,” said Lt. Duane Gansemer.

The investigation is continuing, and police are seeking a dozen more suspects, police said. Determining their identities may be difficult because many of them are using the identification of people who have had their credit cards and drivers’ licenses stolen, Gansemer said.

Olive was named by police as the ring’s “mastermind” because during the investigation “her name came up almost routinely in cases we thought were connected to this,” Vail said.

“It’s obvious that she knows her way around the forgery business and seems to have the street contacts to keep her operation going,” he said.

Olive appeared Tuesday in Van Nuys Municipal Court, where her sentencing on another forgery charge was continued, Vail said. She is being held without bail at Sybil Brand Institute.

Olive, along with her boyfriend, Chuck Riley, were convicted more than nine years ago of shooting her parents to death and then burning the bodies in a barbecue pit in the community of Terra Linda north of San Francisco. The celebrated case received massive media attention at the time and was the subject of a 1982 book titled “Bad Blood.”

Riley was sentenced to death in the slayings. Olive, who was 16 at the time, was sentenced to between four and six years at a juvenile detention center. She was released in April, 1983, from the California Institute for Women in Frontera, prison spokesman Don Rafmussen said.

‘Had Been on the Run’

Police said her whereabouts since then has been unknown, except “she told me when I talked to her that she had been on the run,” Gansemer said.

Gansemer, commander of the Police Department’s Valley Forgery division, the lead agency in the counterfeiting case, said the operation was “one of the most sophisticated and wide-ranging that I’ve seen in a long time.”

The investigation began in June when police searched a Canoga Park residence where Olive had been living and found stolen credit cards and counterfeit checks, Vail said.

Among those who have been arrested are Everett Mendes, 50; Steven Nelson, 28, of Los Angeles; Joseph Blood, 24, of Long Beach; Steven Plumart, 29, of Long Beach, Charles Reeff, 24, of Long Beach; Vickie Becker, 24, of North Hollywood, Belinda Germano, 23; Mary Presley, 23, Renee VanVliet, 24, of Hollywood; and Michael Barnett, 24. All have been released on bail ranging from $50,000 to $1,000.

Police said the case will be presented to the district attorney at the end of this week or early next week.