9 Charged With Having Hot Avocados

You have to figure that any suspect charged with grand theft avocado is in deep guacamole, especially if he’s arrested in the biggest avocado bust in recent California history.

And that’s exactly what happened in Temecula on Wednesday night. Nine suspects were arrested in an operation conducted by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department that netted 11,000 pounds of the green fruit allegedly stolen from nearby groves.

The suspects were charged with breaking California Penal Code 487, the grand theft statute that covers agricultural products from algae to shellfish. If convicted, the men could face jail sentences of up to a year.

“According to the information we have received, it’s the biggest (bust) ever,” said Avi Crane, director of industry affairs for the California Avocado Commission. “It’s really amazing. . . . These guys, wow, they were sophisticated.”

Particularly in seasons when the crop is small and prices are high, avocados are the most commonly stolen agricultural product in California--the state that produces 90% of the nation’s avocados. California’s crop is valued at $200 million annually; theft is estimated at $10 million a year. The retail value of the stolen goods recovered Wednesday was about $50,000.

Four sheriff’s deputies found the hot Haas on Wednesday when they raided two garages at a Temecula apartment building, said Deputy Sgt. Bill Walsh. Authorities had received a tip that avocados were being illegally stored, packed and shipped from the site.

Five days of surveillance and two search warrants later, deputies “swooped down like Rodan” and raided the garages, Walsh said. What they found there was a central processing site; it was the agricultural equivalent of narcotics officers stumbling on a drug lab. “It looks like a majority of these thefts were committed by people who work in certain groves,” Walsh said. “They were stealing from their employers and getting receipts from a packing house in Fallbrook. We’re not sure if they were stolen, forged or legitimate.”

The receipts were important, said Bob Vice, president of the California Farm Bureau Federation, because Penal Code 487 makes it illegal to haul more than 40 pounds of produce without a receipt, shipping permit or other proof of ownership.

The thieves then allegedly packed the avocados in used boxes from legitimate growers, like the Calavo Growers of California. The boxes were stamped with California Food and Agriculture certification, so restaurants and markets believed that they were buying the fruit legally, Walsh said.

“They’d head up towards Los Angeles and sell them from Los Angeles to San Francisco,” Walsh said. “These markets were under the impression that they were buying legitimate fruit. They were making these guys a lot of money.”

The avocados were taken from groves in the Rancho California area, west of Temecula. On Wednesday night, it took three pickup trucks three hours to haul the fruit to a refrigerated warehouse. Once it is photographed, the fruit will be returned to its owners, a process that demands speed and sensitivity.

“We’re going to have to return them very quickly,” Walsh said. “They’re ripe and we can’t dilly-dally. By the time this comes to trial, they’ll be a steaming compost heap.”

So much for evidence.