Photo: Erin Aaberg
An Aliso Viejo woman freelancing as a home organizer has been arrested for helping herself to some of her clients’ personal possessions, an action better known as felony grand theft. Her January 31st arrest by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department came after at least three of her clients reported items missing following their organizing sessions with her.
Erin Aaberg, aged 41, was suspected to have stolen costly jewelry from two households and gift cards from another of her southern Orange County clients, starting in 2017, the Sheriff’s Department said in a media statement.
The first victim to notify law enforcement about the theft did so in April 2018. Victim 1 did not initially suspect Aaberg to have stolen her diamond bracelet and gold pendant because a 2018 renovation saw numerous contractors, including Aaberg, passing through. Conjointly, the jewelry thieved had a value of more than $11,000.
The OCSD detective assigned to the case found that the suspect had, in December 2018, sold a gold pendant to a Mission Viejo jewelry shop; Victim 1 positively identified it as the one that had been purloined from her home.
In January 2019, Victim 1 learned on Facebook that other clients of Aaberg had experienced thefts during the periods that they had employed the home organizer for her professional services. This information Victim 1 communicated to the police investigator in charge of her case.
The investigator proceeded by contacting those additional victims who had shared on Facebook their stories of items having gone missing from their residences when the suspect was on the clock. For Victim 2, it was a ring stolen in 2017, among other items. Police said that Aaberg had returned Victim 2’s ring when she believed that reward money would be obtainable.
For Victim 3, himself a police officer who hired the suspect in January 2019 for help in organizing his home, it was the disappearance of numerous gift cards. Victim 3 used surveillance video footage to identify Aaberg as the larcener. He confronted the suspect about the gift cards and she returned them.
Apart from on Facebook, neither Victim 2 nor Victim 3 had officially reported the crimes.
After Aaberg’s January 31 arrest on suspicion of felony grand theft and misdemeanor petty theft, police booked her at the Orange County Jail in Santa Ana with a $20 000 bail. At her February 1 arraignment, she pleaded not guilty.
The investigation is ongoing, and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department seeks any additional victims or information at (949) 206-6191 or kvmarshall@ocsd.org.
