VENTURA COUNTY — Perhaps the ancient admonition “neither a borrower nor a lender be” should have been taken to heart by both the staff at PennyMac Loan Services in Moorpark, and one of their borrowers of record, Todd Alan Duell, a resident of San Diego.
According to Ventura County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Sgt. John Wright, a 911 call to Emergency Services on the afternoon of February 2nd was made by PennyMac’s corporate office staff indicating that Duell had telephoned with a threat to show up at the office to inflict harm on certain individuals.
As it happened, that telephone call was recorded (perhaps to “for quality purposes”, as is often the protocol of customer service operations nationwide) wherein Duell “made very specific and direct threats to come to PennyMac’s Moorpark office and shoot people to get their attention.”
It clearly wasn’t necessary for Duell to travel to PennyMac’s offices to get their attention, because the call itself accomplished that and brought law enforcement onto the scene promptly.
As VCSD’s Moorpark Police Department Sgt. John Wright remarked to the media, “when we get reports of these kinds, we have to take them seriously.”
Deputies took this report so seriously that, with the collaboration of the Thousand Oaks and Camarillo Special Enforcement Units and the San Diego Police Department, they obtained and served a search warrant upon the San Diego residence of Duell, where they seized “three handguns, one AR-15 type rifle and approximately 5,000 rounds of ammunition,” evidence which no doubt gave ample support for the arrest of Duell at the scene.
He was taken into custody without further incident, and given a free ride from San Diego to Ventura County Jail, where he was booked on a charge of making criminal threats, with his bail set at $200,000.
