Sting to Target Conejo Valley, Moorpark Liquor Stores

East County liquor merchants beware: The kid you sell to may be a cop.

The East Valley Sheriff’s Station later this month will begin sending 18- and 19-year-old police cadets into liquor stores in the Conejo Valley and Moorpark to buy alcohol, said Senior Deputy David Lareva.

Merchants who sell to the underage buyers could be fined $750 to $3,000 or have their liquor-vending licenses suspended or revoked, said Ed Macias of the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.

The ABC spent much of last week sending out letters to east county liquor merchants, warning of the decoy program and the heavy penalties that await those who sell alcohol to minors, Macias said.

The goal is not to entrap unwary store owners, he said, but to catch willful lawbreakers.

“We don’t want to have an ‘Aha, we gotcha’ type situation,” said Macias, supervisor of the department’s division that covers Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

“The program is there for identifying any problems that may develop,” he said. “Some may be chronic violators, while others may need to simply tighten up their control in that area.”

Sheriff’s deputies will choose the decoys from among cadets who look much younger than 21, said Lareva. The decoys will try to buy alcohol, showing their real licenses or state identification cards when asked, he said.

Deputies will watch from outside the stores, using binoculars and cameras to record illegal sales.

Last year, a similar sting operation netted 15 violators among 60 stores, most of whom were ordered to pay fines, Lareva said.

This year, the decoys will be buying alcohol at many of the 200 liquor outlets in Conejo Valley and more than 30 in Moorpark.

The program, which runs until Dec. 31, was paid for by a $97,000 grant that the East Valley Sheriff’s Station won from the ABC--the only one awarded in the tri-county area, Macias said.