Phony Bills, IDs Found; 2 Arrested

Sheriff’s investigators have arrested a couple on suspicion of producing counterfeit money and phony driver’s licenses from an Oxnard hotel room.

Authorities suspect Randall Cowden, 38, of Salinas, and his girlfriend, Patricia Phillips, 42, of Oxnard, also stole several thousand dollars in checks out of mailboxes in Ventura County and Northern California.

The pair were arrested at the Vagabond Inn in Oxnard on Thursday and booked on suspicion of producing counterfeit money, checks and driver’s licenses, possessing stolen checks and possessing a controlled substance.

An anonymous caller tipped the Camarillo Police Department to the couple’s operation Thursday morning, said Senior Deputy Daniel Place. Camarillo officers contacted investigators from the sheriff’s Major Fraud Unit, who tracked Cowden and Phillips to the Vagabond Inn.

During a search of the couple’s room, authorities found about $150 in counterfeit money and more than a thousand dollars in stolen checks belonging to residents in Ventura, Camarillo, Oxnard, Newbury Park, and in Visalia and Tulare, authorities said.

Authorities also found a color copier and an older-model word processor they believe was used to produce the counterfeit items.

Place said that with advances in computer technology for home use, it has become easy to produce counterfeit cash, checks and identification.

“It doesn’t take a lot of intelligence to do something like this,” he said. “Just a computer.”

The older computer equipment, however, produced what authorities called “very, very poor quality” copies.

“The computer equipment here is somewhat dated,” Place said. “It’s large, bulky, and by no means sophisticated. . . . This was sort of the poor man’s way to go.”

But checks left in home mailboxes are an easy target for criminals, Place said.

“We’ve even had police officers take their bills and stick them in the mailbox and pull up the red flag,” Place said. “But that’s just an indicator to a thief there’s mail in there waiting to be taken.”

Place said people should take their bills to the post office.