Pretty Snaky! : Pet Store Proprietor Helps Solve Cold-Blooded Case

Tina Nashik thought that she smelled a rat when a man came into her pet shop and tried to sell her $2,500 worth of exotic reptiles at scaled-down prices.

Suspicious, Nashik nevertheless dished out the money to buy nearly 130 snakes, iguanas, lizards, toads and frogs. But she began making calls to other dealers who specialize in reptiles to see if they were missing any stock. Sure enough, Richard Dunn, owner of the Sta-In Pet warehouse in Orange, told her that he had lost dozens of reptiles in the past month.

Visiting Nashik’s Tustin Pet Village in Santa Ana Sunday night, Dunn identified the man who had sold the reptiles to Nashik as one of his delivery drivers and said the boxes in which the reptiles had been transported were his.

Orange Police Detective Patrick Thayer arrested the delivery driver without incident as the suspect showed up for work Tuesday. But then Thayer discovered a small problem.

“None of my so-called partners helped me unload (the evidence from) my car,” he recalled Wednesday.

The evidence included 6 ball pythons, 48 ribbon snakes, 1 Brazilian rainbow boa constrictor, 16 green iguana and an array of lizards, skinks, toads and frogs. In hauling away sackfuls of the cold-blooded creatures, Thayer said he was reminded of a scene in the movie “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” in which actor Harrison Ford is trapped in a room filled with hissing serpents.

“One detective had to leave the room he was so sickened,” Thayer said. “While driving to the station, I had about 50 snakes in the front of my unmarked car, and I was hoping they weren’t going to break through the sack. If they had, I would have bailed out of the car.”

Arrested on suspicion of grand theft was Mark Edward Dahlman, 29, of San Clemente, who began working for Dunn’s reptile warehouse in the 700 block of North Batavia Street about two months ago. Dahlman was being held in Orange County Jail in lieu of $10,000 bail.

According to Thayer, the suspect said he had sold $2,500 worth of stolen reptiles to a pet store in Orange, in addition to those he sold to Nashik in Santa Ana. Dunn said his inventory showed that numerous other snakes, valued at about $1,000 in all, were also taken from his warehouse.

Most of the stolen reptiles have been recovered, Thayer said.

“We had a pretty good crowd in here viewing them (at the Police Department),” Thayer said. “The iguanas were trying to jump out of a bag. Luckily, Dunn was here to handle them for us.”

Nashik and other reptile dealers said their industry is so close-knit that they usually can spot stolen reptiles.

“We’ve recovered five or six stolen collections over the years,” Nashik said. “It’s very hard to unload this stuff. You’d think the criminals would be smart enough to learn that eventually.”

Rare species can fetch prices as high as $10,000, Dunn said. Included among his stolen stock, for example, were a Brazilian rainbow boa worth $800, a Florida milk snake valued at $150 and iguana worth $109 each.

Nashik said the suspect who sold her the reptiles Sunday was so amateurish that he signed his real name to a receipt, drove his own car and presented his live cargo in the same kind of boxes and packaging that a legitimate distributor would use.

“Few private collectors bring in bags stapled neatly and packed,” Nashik said. “I smelled a stinking rat.”

Despite the collection’s worth, Nashik said the suspect initially asked for $600 and quickly accepted her counteroffer of $550 for the entire stock. Convinced that the stock was stolen, however, Nashik said she gave the man only $50 in cash and a $500 postdated check. She has since canceled the check and has been reimbursed by Dunn.

Dunn said he collects reptiles from Africa, Asia, South America and other parts of the world and sells them to pet stores throughout Southern California. Although his Orange warehouse maintains about 2,000 specimens, Dunn said his company’s main line is manufacturing reptile tanks for pet stores and zoos.

Dunn said he began noticing reptiles missing from his warehouse about a month ago. He said the rarer specimens, such as the rainbow boa and milk snake, disappeared first. Then he noticed that tanks containing dozens of reptiles were suddenly less crowded.

“We knew somebody was taking them,” he said, “but we didn’t know who.”

Times staff writer Davan Maharaj contributed to this story.