Photo: Caleb Parish
March 26, 2020 – Ventura Count – 37-year-old Bakersfield resident Caleb Parish has spent the recent weeks on s shopping spree, gathering what Ventura County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Sgt. Kevin Lynch described as “several items of high-end furniture” with which he apparently intended to decorate his residence.
The only issue that brought these purchases to the attention of detectives attached to the Moorpark Investigations Bureau and the Thousand Oaks Special Enforcement Unit is that Parish’s purchases were all made with fraudulent credit card accounts.
VCSD detectives began looking into Parish’s purchases following the report of a Moorpark resident claiming that “an unknown suspect” had opened multiple credit card accounts in his name and racked up more than $20,000 in charges at a furniture store located in the City of Bakersfield.
Checking out the victim’s assertions, detectives used “a variety of investigative techniques” which pointed the finger at Parish as a possible identity thief.
With Parish now in their sights, detectives surveilled him and followed him to a storage unit where they observed him loading “several pieces of the stolen furniture” into his vehicle and then transporting them to his apartment. Upon his arrival back home, Parish was confronted by detectives bearing a search warrant for his residence and his storage unit.
Once inside his apartment, detectives located additional stolen pieces and discovered what Lynch described as “an identity theft laboratory” that included “stolen and washed personal and business checks, counterfeit U.S. currency,” and other indicia of an active identity theft operation.
Parish was taken into custody and transported to Ventura County Jail, where he was booked on multiple charges of identity theft, grand theft, and possession of stolen property, with his bail set at $200,000.
Photo: Courtesy Ventura County Jail Booking
