Moving Company Owner Receives 9-Year Sentence

A moving company owner who failed to deliver the belongings of more than 50 customers and dumped some of the items in the desert was sentenced Tuesday to nine years in prison.

Larry John Phillips, 52, of Lancaster pleaded no contest in May to 10 felony counts of grand theft and embezzlement. Under the terms of a plea agreement, he could have received a suspended sentence if he fulfilled certain conditions, including serving one year in a Los Angeles County jail, helping authorities identify and return customers’ possessions and paying $30,000 in restitution to customers for their losses.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Iver Bye said Phillips failed to come up with the money by the Tuesday deadline. Superior Court Judge Frank Jackson denied a request for a continuance and ordered Phillips to begin serving his sentence in a state prison.

State authorities have called the Phillips case one of the worst ever in the moving and storage business. But Bye said he hopes that others, in what he characterized as an abuse-ridden industry, will take heed of Phillips’ sentence.

“Our hope here is that household goods carriers are really going to get a message from what happened to Mr. Phillips, that they’d better take their responsibilities seriously when they contract to move people’s goods.”

Authorities estimate that total damages caused by Phillips, including lost and damaged goods, range from $250,000 to $1.5 million. In sentencing Phillips, Jackson also imposed a $10,000 fine to help pay for restitution to the mover’s former clients.

Phillips operated mostly under the name Almond Blossom Moving and Storage. He and his employees often picked up customers’ belongings along with their payments, and later refused to deliver the goods unless they sent more money, according to the state Public Utilities Commission, which investigated the case.

Even then, the PUC said, Phillips often did not make the deliveries. He would sometimes tell clients that their furniture and other belongings had been detoured through other states or Canada, when the items had never left the Antelope Valley. Investigators have found items belonging to Phillips’ customers in warehouses and trailers throughout the region and in the Lancaster field where Phillips dumped some goods after he was evicted from a storage facility.

Among the items found scattered in the muddy field were sofas, dishes, appliances, manufacturing equipment, boxes of family photographs and even a piano.

PUC investigator Rick NeLums said all the recovered items are being stored in vaults in Lancaster. Last week, he said, a family from Florida returned to identify their belongings, which included a collection of movie memorabilia and autographed photos.

Other goods that have not yet been collected by their owners include family photo albums and “things that were handed down from grandmothers to sons and daughters and grandkids,” NeLums said. “Items like that you can’t place a value on.”