VICTORVILLE — Barstow Sheriff's Station Detective Steve Hinojos and Robert Hargrove squatted on the cold cement floor of the evidence and storage warehouse at the Victorville Sheriff's Station on Friday and chided each other like old friends as they gleefully tore open plastic bags of evidence and sifted through their contents.

Each agreed that they knew far too much about women's accessories.

Hargrove, an agent for Los Angeles-based Investigative Consultants, had just arrived in Victorville to help Hinojos catalogue 16 garbage bags worth of seized counterfeit merchandise, all bearing the name of famous designers.

"I don't think Chanel makes these," Hargrove said as he tried to figure out the use of a white piece of cloth covered with the designer's logo.

Hinojos, along with deputies from the Victorville Sheriff's Station, seized between $300,000 and $400,000 worth of counterfeit goods on Wednesday from a vendor in the lobby of Kaiser Permanente's High Desert Medical Offices, 14011 Park Avenue.

And Hinojos was still smiling about it two days later as Hargrove, who represents a conglomerate of high-end designers, pointed at a fake Burberry handbag from across the room.

"This is really all low-quality stuff," Hargrove said.

Hargrove was there not only to help Hinojos properly identify the merchandise — he has served as an expert witness on a handful of trials — but also to gather his own evidence to help attorneys for Louis Vuitton serve Kaiser Permanente with a cease and desist order.

The Kaiser Permanente seizure marks the fifth and largest counterfeit case Hinojos has worked on since he took an interest in counterfeit crimes three months ago, he said.

Hinojos, who has become unofficially known as the fashion police, was brought on to the case after receiving a call from a Victorville code enforcement officer who had heard about a "purse party" to be held on Wednesday at the hospital.

"(The Victorville Sheriff's Station) sent a deputy out there but he was totally overwhelmed," Hinojos said.

The vendor, a 43-year-old Riverside woman, had set up shop in a boardroom adjacent to the medical center's lobby, he said. The entire room was filled with fake designer handbags, scarves, ties and even a counterfeit pen and calculator combo.

"(The medical center) thought it was perfectly legal," Hinojos said. "But it was perfectly illegal."

The woman was briefly detained and interviewed but not arrested, he said.

She told police she made a deal with hospital administrators to sell the merchandise in the lobby in exchange for a 10 percent return of her profits toward Kaiser Permanente, who then put the money toward their High Desert Sugar Plum Kids program.

"She just totally duped them," Hinojos said.

The program is a partnership between Kaiser Permanente and the Children's Fund of San Bernardino County to create a holiday giving campaign to aid children in foster situations, known as Sugar Plum Kids, Jennifer Resch-Silvestri, a Kaiser Permanente spokeswoman, said.

It gives staffers the opportunity to purchase items from vendors in their buildings and contribute to a fund for the kids, she said.

The woman had also held similar sales in Kaiser Permanente-owned hospitals in Fontana and Riverside, Hinojos said.

Silvestri said her company was completely unaware that the woman was participating in anything illegal before the seizure and she had fooled hospital administrators in Victorville to allow her to operate in their lobby.

"We will be participating fully in any investigation," she said. "We will also be reviewing our policies for working with independent vendors in the entire San Bernardino County area."

Silvestri said the company would conduct their own investigation into the incident and had not yet used any of the money the woman gave them as part of the High Desert Sugar Plum Kids program.

"We've been had," she said.

Hinojos and Hargrove asked about each others co-workers by first name as they loaded up the seized merchandise, over 100 pounds of it, into the back of Hargrove's van.

They both planned to see each other again after the next bust.

"As long there's something where people can keep making money off of it, like dope or prostitutes, it will never go away," Hinojos said.

He gave Hargrove a cigar before the two parted ways.
 
 

Ian Morrison can be reached at 256-4126 or ian_morrison@link.freedom.com
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