Feds say a Los Angeles car rental agency was actually a "criminal tourism" travel agency

In 2018, burglar teams began targeting homes in good neighborhoods in and around Thousand Oaks.

When Ventura County sheriff’s investigators began investigating, they found the cases had three things in common: The suspects they arrested were foreign nationals, mostly from Chile, who were in the United States on short-term tourist visas. They focused on houses that faced open space and entered through sliding glass doors. And they all drove rental cars from the same location, a parking lot in Pacoima called Driver Power Rental.

That was the start of a six-year investigation that culminated Wednesday morning with the arrests of six people, including a Santa Clarita couple who owned Driver Power Rental and who authorities say masterminded a “criminal tourism” ring that stole at least $35 million in property and cash from homes and businesses across the United States.

The six suspects were indicted on August 1 by a federal grand jury, as was the car rental company itself. The indictment was made public on Wednesday after their arrests.

They face a total of 46 federal felony charges, including wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy to transport stolen property across state lines. Each of the wire fraud and money laundering charges carries a sentence of up to 20 years in federal prison, and the other charges carry lesser sentences.

Hours after those arrests, top Ventura County law enforcement officials joined Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass at a news conference at the FBI offices on Wilshire Boulevard in West LA, along with police and prosecutors from Los Angeles and Orange counties and the top federal prosecutor and FBI official for the region.

Dismantling the network of burglars, they said, would help make homes and businesses safer in the face of a wave of burglaries that has lasted for years.

“Neighborhoods have been terrified and panicked by what’s been happening,” Bass said. “This is a huge step forward and I hope it brings relief to our neighbors in the Los Angeles area and in Southern California.”

The main defendants in the case are Juan Carlos Thola-Duran, 57, and his girlfriend, Ana Maria Arriagada, 41, who live together in the Canyon Country area of Santa Clarita.

Four other people were charged with helping the couple run the robbery ring: Thola’s son, John Thola of Canoga Park; Patricia Enderton of Northridge; Miguel Angel Barajas of Northridge; and Federico Jorge Triebel IV of Woodland Hills.

The business owned by Thola and Arriagada, Driver Power Rental, “was not your average rental car business,” said U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada, chief U.S. attorney for the Greater Los Angeles region. “This business only catered to criminals.”

Most of the thieves using Driver Power Rental came from Chile, the only Latin American country whose citizens can automatically obtain 90-day tourist visas to visit the United States, Estrada said. They always presented fake identification documents to rent cars and often chose luxury models to better blend into wealthy neighborhoods while they searched the homes and businesses they planned to rob.

Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko called the operation “essentially Hertz’s rental car business for thieves, providing them with cars that came into Ventura County for one purpose: to break into homes and rob businesses.”

The company also operated locations in Van Nuys under the names Car Deals and More and Enterprise LA Rental, according to the federal indictment.

In 2018, as the investigation was underway, an undercover agent posed as a legitimate rental car customer and walked into Driver Power Rentals. The company refused to rent to him, according to the indictment, “after learning that the customer had not been referred by anyone in the conspiracy and that the customer had a valid driver’s license.”

A few years later, an informant working with the FBI visited the rental lot and was told by an employee that cars were selling for $500 a week and that the business owners were buying gift cards for 75% of their retail value.

Prosecutors say Thola and Arriagada did much more than provide getaway vehicles. “They acted as quarterbacks for a massive team of eager thieves,” Estrada said, ordering people to travel across the United States to steal cash, luxury handbags, jewelry, credit cards, gift cards and other goods, then selling the goods and paying the thieves a percentage of the profits.

In one case, thieves broke into a jewelry store in the San Francisco Bay Area and stole more than $5 million worth of jewelry and watches, according to the indictment. They also broke into homes, usually when the owners weren’t around, and took cash and jewelry.

They stole credit cards from cars and wallets and immediately took them to stores like Target and Best Buy to buy electronics, gift cards and other high-priced items before they could be canceled, the indictment states. In one case in 2021, they broke into a car parked at a trailhead in Newbury Park, stole credit cards and tried to use them to buy $1,600 worth of jewelry at The Oaks mall.

The stolen goods were either delivered to the ringleaders and their associates or mailed to a FedEx store in Sherman Oaks, where Barajas picked them up, the indictment says.

Prosecutors have identified at least 120 robberies linked to the group, though there could be many more, Estrada said. Ventura County Sheriff Jim Fryhoff said 130 people in Ventura County alone have been arrested for crimes that fit the pattern, with “the vast majority” driving Driver Power Rental cars.

Most of the cases detailed in the indictment occurred in California, but there were also alleged robberies in Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, New Jersey, Missouri and Colorado.

The total value of the stolen goods was at least $35 million, according to Estrada. The indictment alleges that Thola made about $5.5 million from the sale of the goods, including $5.1 million that he sent to bank accounts controlled by the other people arrested Wednesday.

The indictment alleges that Thola and the other defendants used the money to buy four properties in Los Angeles and Santa Clarita, as well as cars and horses. Thola’s Canyon Country property is located on the outskirts of the city and appears to be across the street from a horse ranch.

Akil Davis, FBI assistant director in charge of the Los Angeles field office, said the federal government is in the process of seizing “25 vehicles, several properties and possibly even some horses.”

Thola, Arriagada, Barajas and Enderton are also accused of defrauding the federal government by filing false applications for about $275,000 in COVID-19 business relief loans. They wrote checks to associates and passed them off as payroll expenses, and when their applications were rejected, they immediately reapplied using false information about their businesses, the indictment states.

The Ventura County home burglaries were among the first crimes linked to Driver Power Rental. Fryhoff said that after his agency discovered the links between its suspects, they alerted the FBI, and that led to the formation of the multi-agency regional task force that oversaw the case.

“These investigations often focus on one radius of a very large wheel. In this case, we focused on the entire wheel, and that’s why an investigation like this takes many years,” said Davis, the leader of the FBI’s presence in the region.

“We have an incredible team,” Fryhoff said during the press conference. “This is what happens when nobody cares who gets the credit.”

Tony Biasotti is an investigative and watchdog reporter for the Ventura County Star. He can be reached at [email protected]. This story was made possible by a grant from the Ventura County Community Foundation’s Local Journalism Support Fund.

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Feds say a Los Angeles car rental agency was actually a “criminal tourism” travel agency

ByS. Jacob

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