Data Scavenged From Banks’ Trash : 3 Forgery Ring Suspects Arrested

They literally turned trash into cash.

That’s the way Los Angeles police describe a forgery ring that has caused banks to be a little more careful with what they throw out at the end of the day.

Detective Russell Pungrchar said three suspects have been arrested and 12 more are being sought after a weeklong investigation into the thefts, which involved “well over a hundred banks” as far away as San Francisco and San Diego.

Raymond Sugarman, 44, whom police describe as the ringleader, and Michelle Bell, 35, were arrested last Friday at their Cheviot Hills home where investigators found “a fully operational lab for forging documents they needed for their operation,” Pungrchar said. A woman whom police would not identify was also arrested.

Pungrchar said that while police were arresting Bell at about 7 a.m., Sugarman, whose arrest record for forgery dates to 1963, drove up to the home “with a carload full” of trash bags containing shredded paper that had been taken from the garbage dumpsters of several banks in the San Fernando Valley.

Since last October, the ring had been taking the shredded paper late at night and reassembling the pieces to gather information about individual bank accounts, such as balances, Social Security numbers, maiden names, signature cards and account numbers, Lt. Duane Gansemer said.

The ring frequently operated by using records from the dumpsters to make counterfeit checks, Gansemer said. He said they would then make phony driver’s licenses to display to tellers as identification so they could cash the checks, the largest of which was written for $9,000.

San Diego police arrested Sugarman in 1975 and he was convicted of running an identical operation, Pungrchar said. Bell has been arrested more than 40 times, mostly for forgery offenses, and has used 37 aliases, he said. Bell is currently on parole for forgery, he added.

Sugarman and Bell both pleaded not guilty earlier this week to forgery, receiving stolen property and theft, and are being held in County Jail.

At the suspects’ home on Monte Mar Drive, police confiscated more than 500 stolen checks, 13 bags of shredded papers, photography equipment used to forge documents and counterfeit driver’s licenses with the pictures of people who police believe are members of the ring, Gansemer said.

Police still do not know how many bank customers’ accounts were looted, but Pungrchar predicted that losses at First Nationwide Savings of Woodland Hills could be heavy.

John Allender, director of security for First Nationwide, said the savings institution normally keeps its dumpsters locked, but the lock on the dumpster behind the Woodland Hills branch had been cut off about a month ago and the contents had been taken.

The bank was not aware of the problem until last week when its trash hauler asked why the dumpster was no longer locked, Allender said.

“We don’t know of any losses yet, but they may start showing up on statements,” Allender said. “The customer won’t be the one to take the loss. We take the loss.”

Police are now advising banks to burn their trash at the end of the day rather than throwing it into dumpsters behind the office.