The theft of $200,000 worth of solar panels from a Rancho Cucamonga warehouse last month led to North Hollywood and Chatsworth and the recovery of those panels and other stolen property valued in total at $1 million, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.
Detectives with the Sheriff’s Department’s Rancho Cucamonga station found the stolen property after detectives followed up on a cargo theft report filed by Pro Solar Systems on Jan. 26. The company had filed a report after discovering that a shipment containing $200,000 worth of solar panel equipment had gone missing in transit to its final destination in Florida.
According to a representative from Pro Solar Systems, the thieves used a legitimate trucking company to coordinate a fraudulent pickup from a holding center in Rancho Cucamonga. The representative said the equipment was then reportedly sold to a buyer at a discounted price.
Detectives tracked the missing cargo delivery to a warehouse in North Hollywood on Jan. 31. After coordinating with Los Angeles Police Department’s Cargo Theft Task Force, detectives found the North Hollywood location was affiliated with a separate warehouse in Chatsworth, which previously had stolen solar panels. On Feb. 2, detectives served a search warrant and located the company’s stolen equipment and 50 additional pallets of stolen solar panels between both warehouses.
Upon entering the North Hollywood warehouse, Pro Solar System’s California branch president Patrick Molesworth described the scene as something out of a movie set, “full of solar panels and a swarm of detectives.”
Molesworth said the company CEO personally reached out and thanked the San Bernadino County Sheriff’s Department for the work done by Detective Trever Strand, who was assigned to the case.
No arrests have been made, said San Bernadino County Sheriff spokesperson Mara Rodriguez.
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