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Crime Report: Woman believes phone call from ‘grandson’ in jail, provides money cards to scammer for bail

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March 4

Vandalism: 1200 block of Flanders Road. Someone damaged the rear panel of a mailbox used by eight households. It appeared to have been pried open sometime between 7:30 March 2 and 11:30 a.m. March 4.

March 6

Attempted burglary; vehicle tampering: A woman noticed at 6:30 a.m. on March 6 that the garage door at her home was ajar, but nothing seemed out of place or missing from inside the structure. At about 7 a.m., she spotted a yellow bag with a pair of keys in it on the street near her home. She also then noticed that the car her husband had left parked, unlocked, in the driveway overnight had been entered and its console and glove compartment ransacked. The garage remote control, although still in the car, was found in a different spot than where it had been left. Nothing was reported missing from the vehicle, but the keys the woman found in the street were determined to be related to another petty theft in the neighborhood.

March 7

Vandalism: 1300 block of Foothill Boulevard. A man reported that at about 10:30 a.m. on March 5 he noticed someone had etched the letters “FU” on his office door. He said it happened sometime after he’d last left his office, at about 8:30 p.m. on Feb. 28.

March 8

Grand theft: 1500 block of Foothill Boulevard. A man who reported a similar incident at his business on Feb. 28, said that a five-piece patio set and a patio table were stolen from a rear gated area sometime between 7 p.m. March 7 and 7 a.m. March 8. There were no signs of forced entry, leaving the investigating deputy to conclude someone had jumped over the gate to steal the furniture.

March 9

Grand theft: 400 block of Meadow Grove Street. A woman received a phone call at about 11 a.m. March 7 from a man she believed to be her grandson, asking her to help him make bail after he was arrested for trafficking marijuana in Bakersfield. He asked her to speak to the police sergeant to get details, and another man then came on the line, telling the woman she would need to buy Google money cards (in an amount redacted from the crime report), then call him back. She complied once she purchased the cards, providing the “sergeant” the numbers associated with them. Two days later, she called her grandson to ask if he had been bailed out. He told her he had not been arrested and that she might have been the victim of a scam.

March 10

Burglary, vehicle: 4600 block of Indiana Avenue. A man who was alerted by his neighbors that their car had been broken into checked on his own vehicle, which he’d left locked in his driveway overnight. He discovered someone had rummaged through a briefcase in the car and taken an iPad and an Apple stylus pen. There were no signs of forced entry.

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