Andrew Watters

December 13, 2025

For the last four years since I've been married to Tina, a close friend of ours has lived in a nice community in Walnut, California known as Three Oaks. Three Oaks is a master-planned development built by a developer who graded some 270 acres of hills in the West Covina area to create numerous luxury lots for new home construction. It's a scenic, idyllic place except for one thing: the continuous criminal acts, primarily home burglaries of vacant houses, that disrupt the otherwise tranquil environs. One example of a burglary resulted in a police chase across the freeway, with the suspects finally surrendering (no idea what happened to them, maybe they are back here after being released through Lord Newsom's revolving door). In any case, there is a perfect storm of factors that cause Three Oaks to be ground zero for organized criminal scouting activities as a prelude to residential burglaries.
Sample burglaries captured on video in September 2025 and around Thanksgiving 2025. Note they all wear similar clothes.

First, the community is full of successful Asian business owners. These individuals are likely to split their time among multiple residences, and/or they are living overseas with part-time houses in the U.S. Second, these are all luxury homes, which means (since many are Chinese) they have cash and jewelry, plus luxury goods, in their homes. Third, this area is under the jurisdiction of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and also patrolled by private security, so there is zero police presence. Finally, when they do have incidents, the burglars can escape through grassy fields and ground shrubs, often fading into the scenery even if they have a helicopter overhead (as happened in one recent incident). Essentially, if you were going to be a burglar for an organized crime syndicate, this is the best chance at a high value payoff with the least amount of hard targets. The criminals know this instinctively, which is why they succeed in knocking over people's houses and continue to have an active, daily presence in this community even though they know that we know they are here. Lately they have been stealing people's mail, as well:

When we/I are/am visiting, I do my best to be aware of the surroundings. Lately there have been as many as 12-15 "scout" vehicles per day, which I define as new vehicles to the community that show up, drive down our friend's street, and drive right out, perhaps while taking photos. Sure, some of these could be people taking photos of houses for any legitimate purpose, but when you have a dozen in one day and nobody's house on the street is for sale? That starts creating issues. Next, there are crazy occurrences, such as the obvious burglaries happening, but also-- recently-- drones flying overhead and low over people's houses. There is no reason to fly a drone in this area unless you are with the power company and you're looking at foliage growth near power lines, as Southern California Edison apparently does. But I digress.

I have had enough of this, so I decided to fight back by starting to drive around and take photos, and post videos, of all the suspicious vehicles and individuals who show up in the community when I am here. Today 12/13/2025 was a hell of a first day for this. Here is my email to the security company contact describing what I saw:

Hi [Redacted],

Another drone sighting occurred yesterday 12/12/2025 on [Redacted], two streets away from us.  The neighbor was taking in his trash bins when a drone flew low over him and his property.  That's all I have on that one.

As for me, I had a very productive afternoon today.  Around 1:45 p.m., I drove up to the top of the trailhead on Walnut Vista just to get a sense of what was up there, and to calibrate my binoculars.  I also wanted to see if there were any drone pilots.  I walked around a little.  I then observed yet another suspicious vehicle, this time a white van driving by (see attached photos, CA 6YBV470).

The young male driver sat in the parked van for 10 minutes near the trailhead, then drove further up Walnut Vista, got out of the van, and spent 5-10 minutes looking at the scenery while standing in a grassy area that's off the trail.  Just for the hell of it, when he started driving back down, I started following him.  Within a block, he knew he was being followed and he turned abruptly onto Saddlehorn to lose me.  I knew Saddlehorn comes out again on Lemon, so I drove down to the second exit and waited.  He was there within seconds and turned out onto Lemon, then stopped in order to let me pass.  I stopped 20 yards behind him. We started driving in cat-and-mouse mode, and I kept following him. After a couple iterations of this, he stopped and leaned out of the driver's window and said some things I didn't hear, while gesturing (I think he was asking "are we cool?" or something similar).  I didn't react, and he did this several times.  He then drove out onto Amar and tried to lose me at about 80 miles per hour in a 50 zone while driving dangerously.  We went through a couple intersections and he turned onto another side street with only one outlet.  I turned around and was going to call it off, but then he came out from the only outlet and started following me.  He was taking pictures of my car from the rear while I waved at him.  I made a U-turn that he wouldn't be able to do in the van, and we flipped each other off, thereby ending the encounter.

Due to the individual's suspicious behavior, immediate surveillance-consciousness, and highly abnormal driving, I find it highly probable this is one of the suspects in the serial burglaries that are ongoing in the community, or else he is a close associate. This was one half-afternoon of effort.  Although they know what I look like and what car I drive, and they will see my car in [Redacted]'s driveway, I believe it was worth getting this lead.  Across maybe 15-20 cases, I've only been in one scenario where there was surveillance-consciousness by the target, so it is really unusual from my perspective.

If the guards could be on the lookout for this white van and the driver-- a young male who appeared to be a mid-20s mixed Black/Asian man with an unusual bowl-cut semi-afro hairdo, that would be great.  Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or requests.

Thanks,

Andrew G. Watters, Esq.

And here are the relevant photos:

The issue is not the young man's race. The issue is his suspicious behavior. This is the first of many days where I intend to do something about this ridiculous, ongoing campaign of serial burglaries. I might as well post this online because I'm sick of this bullshit and people need to start fighting back. I am my own security, so I'm not too worried about us. But I worry for other people. More field trips coming soon!

Back to Hall of Shame.