About 150 Face Charges as 7-Month Fencing Sting Ends

For months, the crooks showed up at the nondescript industrial warehouse office to unload their stolen cars and to buy and sell drugs.

The hidden video camera quietly whirred, and the buyers took notes to build their case.

On Thursday, the fencing operation was unveiled as a seven-month sting conducted by area law enforcement officials who then staged raids and arrested 56 of about 150 suspects implicated in offenses ranging from auto theft to drug possession and possession of stolen goods.

Some of the suspects were arrested after they showed up at the office as invited, to supposedly help transport some of the stolen cars to Long Beach Harbor for shipment overseas.

About 50 other suspects were already in custody following earlier arrests, and another 50 or so remain at large and are now targeted with arrest warrants, authorities said.

The operation, orchestrated by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department with help from the Ontario and Rancho Cucamonga police departments, yielded $1.5 million in stolen property, authorities said.

The biggest hauls: 95 stolen vehicles that were sold to undercover agents for a total of only $21,000, and four tractor-trailer rigs, including a $220,000 big rig that a thief sold to undercover agents for $500. One of the stolen trucks still contained its load of canned tuna, and another was loaded with steel.

The operation also recovered more than $300,000 in stolen property brought in by suspected home burglars.

After detectives bought the vehicles and other goods, they traced the rightful owners and returned the items to the victims, said Jim Bryant, spokesman for the Sheriff’s Department.

Most of the suspects were arrested during a series of early morning raids Thursday by 75 law enforcement officers who knocked on doors and awakened some unwary suspects.

Half of the people arrested already had prior felony convictions, Bryant said.

A similar operation was conducted about four years ago in the same area, Bryant said--and some of the people arrested then were arrested again Thursday.

“They’re not brain surgeons,” he said.