Bogus Workers Get Into Home, Take Cash
Five men, including two disguised as Department of Water and Power employees, tied up and robbed the occupants of a Van Nuys home Thursday before fleeing with cash, authorities said.
The two men wearing DWP uniforms went to the house in the 7300 block of Ostrom Avenue about 10:30 a.m. and told the residents there they were checking on a water problem, said Los Angeles Police Officer Eduardo Funes.
As they were being let in, three other men arrived with semiautomatic handguns and bound the hands of the home’s occupants, a man and a woman, authorities said. The robbers ransacked the house and fled with an undisclosed amount of cash, police said.
The man and woman were not injured.
Thursday’s home invasion robbery came a day after a similar incident in Los Feliz.
About noon on Wednesday, three men dressed in orange shirts with Los Angeles city employee badges and white hard hats with an unknown insignia, told the occupants of a Los Feliz house they needed to survey the property. Once inside, they pistol-whipped two occupants before fleeing with valuables, Funes said.
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