3 Accused of Stealing 2,300 Pounds of Irrigation Pipe

Oxnard farmer Dan Naumann is happy he listened when authorities told him to mark his aluminum irrigation pipe to guard against theft.

Naumann learned this week that $4,800 worth of his missing pipe had turned up at a San Fernando Valley recycling center, where it was being sold.

“The labeling that we did is what got it back,” Naumann said.

Three Covina men were arrested in connection with the pipe theft and booked into Ventura County Jail on Monday. They were identified as Richard Kenneth Jensen, 30, James Michael Nelson, 34, and Robert Scott Lane, 19.

Naumann, co-owner of A.A. Naumann Inc. of Oxnard, said sections of aluminum pipe used to irrigate his family’s vegetable crops were first stolen about a month ago. If it wasn’t bolted down, he said, thieves would take it.

On Monday, detectives from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department’s Rural Crime Prevention Unit received word from Los Angeles police that they had three men in custody on suspicion of grand theft.

The stolen property was 2,300 pounds of aluminum irrigation pipe, said Sheriff’s Capt. Bill Montijo.

Authorities alleged the men were trying to sell the pipe at a Chatsworth recycling center.

Ventura County authorities arrested the men on suspicion of grand theft and felony possession of stolen property, and recovered the pipe.

“For a couple of years we didn’t have a problem,” said Naumann, whose great-grandparents started farming in Oxnard in 1900.

However, thieves in Ventura County have stolen $195,000 worth of pipe so far in 1997, compared with only $1,200 worth last year, authorities said.

What’s the lure? As much as 50 cents per pound for scrap aluminum.

Naumann said his pipe was recovered because it had been marked with numbers traceable through a national computer network.

Naumann planned to go to Chatsworth today or Monday to pick up his pipe.

On Thursday, Jensen and Lane were being held without bail, and Nelson had been transferred to the county’s work furlough program in Camarillo, authorities said.