A two-year expired vehicle registration led deputies to uncover a woman in possession of forged checks, cellphones, credit cards, and identification cards in what is now being investigated as a major fraud case, a Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station official said.
When patrolling the area of Saugus near the 22800 block of Soledad Canyon Road on Thursday, deputies spotted a red Kia Optima with a vehicle registration expired by two years, Shirley Miller, a spokeswoman with the SCV Sheriff’s Station, said on Wednesday morning.
Deputies then conducted a traffic stop of the vehicle, which was occupied by a female driver, a male passenger, and three dogs, she said.
The female driver was identified as a 31-year-old woman from Lancaster with an active warrant out for her arrest, Miller said.
Deputies soon discovered she was in possession of dozens of forged checks from “various victims’ accounts with altered payable to fields, multiple stolen IDs, phones, credit cards and other personal identifying documents,” stated a SCV Sheriff’s Station post on social media.
She was also in possession of equipment commonly used to produce counterfeit checks, the post said.
The male passenger, a 28-year-old man from Palmdale, was in possession of a controlled substance at the time of the traffic stop and had an outstanding $200,000 warrant for his arrest for a previous alleged robbery, Miller said.
It is unknown exactly how many forged checks were found in the vehicle, Miller said, and detectives are actively investigating whether any possible victims were local or from other areas.
Deputies arrested both individuals and booked them into the SCV Sheriff’s Station jail where the woman was released on citation, and the man remains in custody as of the publication of this story.
The Lancaster woman is due at San Fernando Superior Court on Aug. 22, and the Palmdale man remains in custody at Pitchess Detention Center for his next court date scheduled for Aug. 20, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department arrest logs available online.
According to Miller, the L.A. County Department of Animal Care and Control was called to the scene of the traffic stop and animal control officers took three dogs into their possession after the individuals were arrested.
