10News.com viewers help I-TEAM expose bad guy

We recently reported on a rental scam working our region. Two males and a female, possibly more are involved. These rascals are able to access the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) used by Realtors to develop their scheme. Those listings, which are supposed to be used by Realtors only, show homes for sale, if the home is vacant, provide details about the property and in some cases, a code number to punch into the gadget that secures the house's front door. It's "old" technology and the crooks were able to access the house keys by using the code in the MLS listing. The reason these old school lock boxes are being used right now is because of the glut of homes for sale in the San Diego market. Some realtors apparently ran out of the newer, high-tech SentrilLock lockboxes which require an encrypted card and a PIN number that changes every day. So apparently the bad guys targeted high end homes with the access code provided on the MLS site. The bad guys would cut and paste the pictures and features of the property from MLS listings onto Craigslist. They offered them at reasonable rent, requiring a first and last months deposit as well as a security deposit. At least three properties were involved, all for sale and all vacant. They set up the "appointments" for every 45 minutes, collecting money from unsuspecting renters though the day while they worked one property. Then they moved onto another property they had listed for rent on Craigslist.
We found they used at least three different cell numbers.

We are still hearing from victims and we suspect these rental rascals made thousands of dollars in a very short time.

WE HAVE A NEW DEVELOPMENT.

My blog readers are the first to know this. Anthony Zoccolillo has been identified by multiple sources as the man in the video who enters the home illegally and then runs from our cameras. I have provided you a still photo of Zoccolillo as seen in our video..and another as seen on a MySpace website which we have been tipped to. Thanks for those who have helped us continue to pursue this scheme.


Still of Anthony Zoccolillo from 10News I-Team video.


Photo of Anthony Zoccolillo from MySpace page.


Another picture of Zoccolillo from MySpace page.



MORE ON THIS I TEAM EXCLUSIVE STORY:

Sandicor, which is the largest MLS in the county, posted this notice to Realtors after we contacted them. We thank them for their quick resposne. Hopefully this shuts down these rip-off artists in San Diego. We learned the cons are on the move and at least one gang member is be heading elsewhere and we are in the process of alerting other regional MLS systems.

We are cooperating with the the San Diego Police Department. A detective involved in the case asks if you have information you can route it to SDPD through the normal channels or forward onto the I Team and we will contact the detective on your behalf.


Warning posted on Sandicor Web site.

MORE ON THIS STORY:

We had received a tip that the guy we "captured" on video was a federal parole. We needed to confirm this so we did what any good citizen would do, we contacted the parole office--telling them we had video of someone committing a crime who may or may not be on federal parole. The main public information office in Sacramento didn't return our call in a timely fashion so we asked the agency locally.
(Feds public information officers are very protective of their turf--and get upset if you go around them but we had no choice on this)

We sent the local Feds a still of the bad guys picture and information on the scheme to their office here in San Diego. I explained if he wasn't in their system, we would look for other agencies who might have him on probation. (Don't believe all you hear about these agencies cooperating because of the attacks on 9-11) My request was simple, I thought. Here is the response from the number two guy locally to this request.

The response to our request


Click to enlarge.

My response to the response



Click to enlarge.

Again, we wanted to find out--yes or no---is he in the Federal justice system somewhere? If not we would spend more time finding out which, if any agency, has him on probation.

jwblog@10news.com

10News story synopsis: We reported on how fire camps manned by county prisoners doing soft time were used at one time to help cut back the brush and clear dead vegetation that fuel those scary fires. The camps formed a protective arc across the county. This was stopped about 20 years ago. Our investigation centered on the question of why can’t these camps be reopened? Why not get low-risk county prisoners to help clear brush? The California Department of Forestry currently does the same thing with state prisoners.

How & Why we did the story.
The I team story on the Fire Camps evolved from a couple different directions.
A source of mine has spent years pushing for coverage of juvenile court issues. This well-meaning individual is constantly advocating for the kids and parents that get trapped in the system. Juvenile Hall is run by the county’s probation department.
Like most agencies, probation has good people working for it and also some not so good people. What resulted from my knowledge of the department and different sources were a series of 10 News stories about the system and its ugly warts.
In doing the Juvenile Hall stories, I met a number of dedicated people working within the system trying to change it. And one constant I was hearing was how the loss of the fire camps had hurt the community. Juveniles, working in the camps, didn’t have as much energy and idle time to pick fights or figure out whose head to mess with, or to do the other things anger-filled young folks are capable of doing. There was a feeling, I am told, that the young prisoners took pride in their work. They felt their hard work in clearing the hillsides and canyons had value. So did the men who oversaw them in the fire camps. Of course, there was another benefit for San Diego—less brush means less fuel for fires. I often wonder if the fires of 2003 would have been as severe if the fire camps had been up and running at that time.
But the camps went away. While much time has passed and some in the county bureaucracy would prefer to forget the reasons for the camps' disappearance, I haven’t.

Former Sheriff John Duffy and the probation department were in a struggle over budgets and personnel. This bled over into control of the prisoners in the camps.
The Sheriff was a tough hombre and always got his way with the Board of Supervisors, so when push came to shove, the politicos folded. And they did on this issue, like a $20 tent in a strong Santa Ana. No names mentioned here, not even the guy that does talk radio these days. Duffy won and the camps went away. It was politics, power over public safety and let’s face it, it’s hard to sell the idea of the camps if no big fires have happened since the Laguna Fire. The bean counters can come up with a thousand reasons not to do something. Of course, no one would ever imagine Scripps Ranch burning.

So for years, these probation officers and my Juvenile Hall source have been on me about the camps. We did an abbreviated story on the issue after the fires of'03 but never got any traction because of the flood of stories post fire.

But now, here’s the best part of the story. The hero arrives, the calvary shows up and you start to believe.

It began with a chance meeting with Matt Streck. You might see Matt in televised reports at fire scenes. He does the media interviews for the California Department of Forestry at fire scenes. A real stand up guy, if he says something, you can count on it. I had just spoken to my source when Matt happened to stop by 10News. The fire camps were top of mind, so I got into a discussion with Matt about them. He told me how successful CDF viewed their efforts working with state prisoners. But there were not enough crews; there is just too much ground to cover in San Diego County. CDF needs help. I asked Matt if he could find someone at CDF to talk about that need and to get a feel for how the “powers-that-be” felt about the fire camps the county used to run. Like any government agency, the CDF doesn’t like burning its bridges so they are careful talking about another agency's turf. But Matt said he would try. And he came through—big time, with Division Chief Randy Lyle. The Chief says he’s spent “33 fire seasons” with the CDF. Lyle is near retirement and ready to spend a lot of time in the ocean going surfing, which makes sense when you find out his dad worked the kelp beds years ago.

So I asked the Chief, was he willing to talk about the CDF brush abatement work with state prisoners? Yes. How about talking about how much more work needs to be done? Yes, again. How about those county fire camps? No problem. He would tell it like it is. And he did, in an interview at the CDF headquarters parking lot in El Cajon. Division Chief Randy Lyle laid it all out for us. His interview would be most important in getting the County of San Diego to pay attention.

The next element -- talking a former long time probation officer into doing an interview -- was not a problem. He’d been waiting years to tell his story. George Dean stepped up to the plate and belted out all the anger and resentment he felt over the politics involved in the camp closing, how it hurt the kids in the juvenile system and wondered what would have happened if the camps had remained open all these years.

It didn’t take long for the staff at Supervisor Dianne Jacob’s office to “get it.”
Chief of Staff Geoff Patnoe and Media Specialist Jennifer Stone moved quickly to bring the story to the Supervisor’s attention after I called them. For that, I thank them. It’s helpful to get this kind of support because many times the filters around the elected leaders view their role as keeping the media away and to control the ideas and people who have access to the politician in power. (see my previous blog on Fred “the filter king” Sainz)

The Supervisor thought the idea of using low risk prisoners to help control brush made sense and immediately scheduled a meeting with the Sheriff's Department, Probation and the CDF. She tells us it went well but it’s going to be up to the Sheriff’s department to figure out a way to make this happen. It will not be easy. The Sheriff’s department (just like SDPD) has a shortage of officers. That’s going to cause some staffing issues. The other, more hidden obstacle are the old timers still in the county bureaucracy who may see this as a threat. They can kill this idea if they can figure a way to spin it. But hopefully, those in positions of power are a far more progressive bunch than those 20 years ago and can see the wisdom in adding more fire power for reducing fire danger.

Postcript:
The story was reported by Steve Atkinson. And his 10News I-team partner Lauren Reynolds.* Photojournalist Michael Gonzalez hung in with me throughout and helped put together some good television. Plus, thanks goes to Editor Jimmy Villegas who chipped in on our last story. There have been four stories to date. Check them out on this site.

*How we work:
We stay very busy in this business; so many times a producer will work with an anchor like Steve to produce the story. That is the case here. Steve was hustling to put together a tough, difficult story on a new type of white collar crime on the Internet so I ended up researching and writing this one. While my title is managing editor, my first love is producing investigative reports, so I look for chances to keep my hands in that. And it’s especially gratifying when you may be able to do something good for your community.


Worried about low risk prisoners working the brush? Let me know what you think.

jwblog@10news.com

I hope you saw our story on the Navy Broadway Complex. We spent months trying to find documents and experts and gain insights chasing what I thought was a pretty good hunch. We suspected there is a active fault under the proposed site of the Broadway Complex. That’s that primo piece of land the Navy owns and Super Developer Doug Manchester is hoping to build on. It’s received lots of news coverage. But I never saw any reports or coverage on my hunch. So I began tracking the story—and now I get the distinct impression that the Centre City Development Corporation, some elements inside the City of San Diego, developer Doug Manchester and possibly the U.S.Navy would probably have preferred we passed on the hunch.

We ran into problems early on. The first obstacle was finding an expert to review the initial seismic report by the geologists hired by Manchester -- the company is GeoCon. I have heard for years about fault movement in the downtown area and I figured Manchester’s geologic study would prove to me once and for all there were or were not active faults in the area. When I went through the report, there were two things that struck me. I learned little about any potential seismic movement in the area of the project. And just as important to me was some pages were missing out of the geologists report and missing things in reports involving big money projects tend to motivate me to want to know more about what is going on. So I was left questioning how the report concluded that the geologists “did not find signs of faulting at the site. It is suitable for the proposed development.” Right then, I knew I needed someone who was familiar with the industry and these types of reports. It took some time to find an expert; not a lot of folks will step up and critique a Manchester project. He’s a heavyweight and this is clearly an important project for his people. We ended up calling all over the country before we were referred back to someone right here in San Diego -- Dr. Jeffrey Johnson. He is qualified and careful, which is important when you are chasing a subject like this. I liked and trusted him immediately because he was not interested in publicity or money but he was also curious about the efforts made by the geologists working for GeoCon.

The good doctor agreed to review the GeoCon study inside and out. He then created a report for 10News which you can find in its entirety on the 10News Investigations section of this website. Read it for yourself. Eventually the Manchester people did provide me the missing pages from the GeoCon report. Those missing sections provided allowed Dr. Johnson to finish his appraisal of the geologist’s seismic report. His findings? A more detailed and through investigation of the proposed job site is needed.

Producer Kristen Castillo found an important element for us -- a report prepared by geologist Michael Kennedy for CalTrans. He mapped and named the Coronado Fault while surveying the San Diego Bay as part of a check-up of the Coronado Bridge in 2001. He had concluded it was an active fault. Reporter Marti Emerald found Dr. Jeff Babcok at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography was mapping the fault using some high tech gadgets. We can’t tell you the exact location of the fault lines but we could if a more thorough study were done or when Dr. Babcok finishes his project.

An active fault is defined as one that has moved in the last 10,000 years. That seems like a long time but not when you consider the age of Mother Earth. We found the Coronado Fault was active as recently as 500 years ago. The best guess we have is it runs from the eastern side of Coronado directly into the Navy Broadway Complex site and then jogs north along the Embarcadero.

Here is the no-brainer part -- you can't build on an active fault, if you know it is active. IF YOU KNOW IT IS ACTIVE. Based on the GeoCon report, once Manchester and the Navy worked out the details, they could start building. But what we found seems to say otherwise.

We tried to tell Mayor Sanders about what we had found. Marti asked for an interview but we got blown off and ended up talking with his spokesman, Fred Sainz. It was a useless interview. Sainz clearly thought we were wasting his time, he knew less about the subject then we did, and he didn’t care what Dr. Johnson’s report said. It wasn’t the city's problem, he said, it was Manchester's and the Navy's.

Here’s the latest. Several watchdog citizens groups have been part of this effort. They’re bright, informed and are not easily brushed aside by arrogant publicists or blustery bureaucrats. Activist Ian Trowbridge had attorney Cory Briggs filed an appeal of the Center City Development Corporation's decision on the amended master plan for the Navy Broadway Complex. It says CCDC has violated the Alquist-Priolo Earthquake Fault Zoning Act and the Seismic Hazards Mapping Act. And community activist Kathryn Rhodes has done a great deal of research on faults. She tipped me to the report that killed the proposed Coronado Tunnel. It went down in flames when the consultants found a fault near the tunnel's proposed path.

I spoke to Mr. Briggs about the appeal and he told me something that’s got me motivated again on the story. The attorney told me (on his way out the door to get married) that it took him four days of back-and-forth e-mails and shouting on the phone to CCDC officials to find out which FORM he has to fill out to appeal the decision. They kept telling him it was a waste of time.
Maybe. Maybe not.

jwblog@10news.com