Ventura County Sheriff’s detectives have arrested a mother-daughter duo they’ve dubbed the “panty bandits.”
Investigators say the duo from LA was shoplifting panties, bras, and other items from Victoria’s Secret stores in Oxnard and Thousand Oaks.
Detectives say Maria Perez, her daughter Melissa, and a teenager would they would pile merchandise into a stroller. Once it was filled, one of them would distract staff and the other two would wheel away the loaded stroller.
They think the time was behind five separate local incidents in which more than $14,000 dollars in merchandise was stolen. Detectives say they ID’s the trio with surveillance video, and arrested them over the weekend.
Investigators with the company say the mother-daughter team may have taken as much as $250,000 in merchandise from stores throughout the state during the last two years.
