{"id":288444,"date":"2026-04-27T18:35:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T18:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/288444\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T18:35:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T18:35:11","slug":"fresno-county-eyes-crackdown-on-stolen-produce-sales-at-swap-meets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/288444\/","title":{"rendered":"Fresno County Eyes Crackdown on Stolen Produce Sales at Swap Meets"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fresno County may soon go after fruit and vegetable vendors selling stolen produce.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Supervisor Buddy Mendes directed the County Administrative Office to research what it would take to go to swap meets and roadside stands to ensure produce being sold didn\u2019t come from farmers without their permission.<\/p>\n

Mendes told GV Wire last week that a group of farmers came to him saying thieves had hit their orchards and fields, stealing fruit at night when there\u2019s nobody there.<\/p>\n

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He said while farmers\u2019 markets are typically vigilant about enforcing permitting, he wanted swap meets to do the same.<\/p>\n

Sophisticated Operations<\/p>\n

Fruit theft operations can be sophisticated, said Fresno County sheriff\u2019s deputy Andres Solis.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see the same group of people coming in and jail out\u2026 they all know each other, they know how to do this, they know what time to hit,\u201d Solis said.<\/p>\n

Teams will go out into the middle of orchards where they can\u2019t be seen and will communicate via two-way radios to alert people in the fields if they see a farmer or patrol car.<\/p>\n

Pomegranates have become popular theft targets, Solis said, joining other crops such as peaches, lemons, mandarins, and oranges.<\/p>\n

An organizer will go out into a field with a few trucks that look like they belong to workers. They\u2019ll often find homeless people, some of them already in the field, and give them a \u201cquick buck\u201d to pick a section of the field clean, Solis said.<\/p>\n

From there, thieves will go to packing houses to sell the produce, or to other parts of the state to sell.<\/p>\n

Thieves will often go to supply shops to buy boxes and bags to appear legitimate, but clues can give them away, such as oranges in a banana box.<\/p>\n

\u201cPacking houses aren\u2019t gonna ask a whole lot of questions. There\u2019s no serial numbers on the oranges or citrus fruit,\u201d Solis said. \u201cThere\u2019s no telling where it came from.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stolen Produce Often Finds its Way to LA, Bay Area: Solis<\/p>\n

A representative from the Cherry Auction Swap Meet said they ensure all vendors have licenses and permits to sell.<\/p>\n

They said inspectors from the county\u2019s Department of Public Health and Agricultural Commissioner will often go out to ensure safety and compliance.<\/p>\n

Solis said thieves will often take it to the Bay Area or Los Angeles to sell, or they\u2019ll simply sell it on the side of the road.<\/p>\n

One thing Mendes didn\u2019t want to do was disrupt farmers or workers who are legitimately selling produce on the road.<\/p>\n

Charges for stolen produce rarely result in more than a year in jail, Solis said. Though, thieves may get weapons charges that can result in prison time, with stolen ag produce enhancing those charges.<\/p>\n

The state at one point considered a law to make it easier to pull over suspected thieves. A bill required that oranges be transported in netting and that a bill of sale be available for review. Solis said it would have made it easier to pull over potential thieves and find out where they got their produce.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, it didn\u2019t go anywhere, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat thing just got shut down,\u201d Solis said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fresno County may soon go after fruit and vegetable vendors selling stolen produce. On Tuesday, Supervisor Buddy Mendes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-288444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}