Pros Are Beating County Residents at Con Games

This has been the season for con games in Ventura County.

A few months ago, victims of six lottery scams lost more than $30,000.

In one of the cases, a woman who believed she would share in a winning $64-million ticket handed over $16,000.

The newest bunco game ensnared a young man who had a luckless encounter outside an Oxnard Lucky.

A man claiming to have recently arrived from Africa approached the 18-year-old Oxnard resident last month in the grocery store’s parking lot and in a thick accent asked directions to a church.

The man said he wanted to donate $80,000 in cash and asked the teenager for help, Oxnard Police Officer Denise Shadinger said.

The man promised to give him half the cash if the teen gave him some earnest money.

The teen handed over $200 and his wristwatch. The man then pretended to stash $40,000 in a gray bandanna, which he called a “prayer cloth,” into a cubby hole inside the teen’s car.

The man told the victim he could open the cloth when he got home.

The rest is history.

“Naive people are willing to help anybody,” Shadinger lamented.

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A glossy trading card landed on my desk the other day.

It wasn’t a McGwire or a Sosa. It shows four cops in full motocross regalia, standing around a polished blue-and-white Suzuki 350 dirt bike.

The sheriff’s off-road team in Thousand Oaks mugged for this card a couple of years ago. It was given out to kids as a souvenir and a reminder to stay off drugs.

What I wanted to know was whether the two-wheeled posse had been a passing fad or were these guys still roaming the range?

In fact, the sheriff’s off-road detail got started about 25 years ago shortly after Simi cops started chasing rogue dirt bikers in a souped-up Volkswagen.

The sheriff’s team now boasts 15 members at stations in Thousand Oaks, Ventura and Lockwood Valley. They hit the leather a couple of times a week.

Off-road deputies haven’t been called out on anything as exciting as hunting down an Eric Rudolph or D.B. Cooper. They deal primarily with people trespassing on private property.

Few tickets are issued. Most of the time, the deputies just tell the wandering bikers where they can legally ride in Piru and Hungry Valley.

“Most people who wind up on private property honestly didn’t realize they couldn’t ride there,” said Sgt. Ron Tusi, head of the East Valley’s off-road detail.

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They don’t say it out loud, but it’s a moment officers and deputies throughout Ventura County wait for all year.

It’s the night that someone says publicly for all to hear: Thanks.

The Peace Officers Assn. of Ventura County will hold its 26th Annual Medal of Valor dinner Saturday at a hotel ballroom in Oxnard. More than a dozen winners will be announced.

Santa Paula Police Cmdr. Bob Gonzales said the dinner is the Academy Awards of law enforcement.

“It’s phenomenal to talk about the different incidents that these people have been through,” said Gonzales, who is due to become Santa Paula’s next police chief.

For the last year, the association’s 16-member board has met monthly behind closed doors to vote on nominations made by nearly every law enforcement agency in the county.

The highest honor is the medal of valor. Seven will be handed out this year. These honor actions in situations so perilous that an officer’s failure to act would be excused.

“All of the recipients are outstanding,” said Port Hueneme Police Sgt. Jerry Beck.

Not all winners are cops. This year, a surfer will be honored for bravery.

For those who can’t go--the envelope, please.

The surfer will receive a medal of merit for helping others trying to save Ventura Harbor Patrol Deputy Paul Korber.

Korber, 45, died in March 1998 while trying to rescue a mother and her two children in heavy rip currents.

The Distinguished Service Medal will recognize Sheriff’s Senior Deputy Lisa Whitney, 28, of Oxnard, who was killed on duty last August when her car was broadsided by a truck.

The rest of the winners will be revealed at the dinner.

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Just file this one under The Thin Man Solves the Case of the Wrong Skeleton.

After he finished “tenting” a vacant house in the midcity area of Oxnard, an exterminator lowered himself into the dark, damp underbelly for one final inspection.

Looking for surviving creepy crawlies, the bug man came face-to-face with a skeleton.

Thinking it was the remains of a human being, the poor man exited the crawl space at the speed of an amped lab rat and called authorities.

A well-fed detective from Oxnard’s major crimes unit arrived and circled the opening in the floor. It was maybe a foot wide.

“He said, ‘We want you,’ ” chuckled Deputy Coroner James Baroni, who was then called in. “We joked around about me and one of the larger investigators both being on call and them needing me because nobody else could fit.”

Baroni, slim and about 5 feet 7, rolled to the scene.

Before he arrived, though, a city firefighter of like stature and girth retrieved the evidence--animal remains.

“It was a cat, and it was a relief,” Baroni said.

The poor pussy had unfortunately perished beneath the house many months earlier. So how could a cat skeleton be mistaken for a human being?

Baroni said mistakes happen.

“I think if you had a flashlight and took a close look and knew a little about anatomy, you’d know it was a cat,” Baroni said.

“All in a day’s work,” said one detective.

Holly J. Wolcott can be reached at holly.wolcott@latimes.com.