Sgt. Dan Suttles, Media Contact
818-548-3140 (office) 
dsuttles@glendaleca.gov

Glendale, CA: On October 9, 2018, at 10:00 pm, a Glendale Police Officer saw a white Chevrolet pickup truck driving southbound on South Chevy Chase Drive near Harvard Street with no front license plate and no working tail lights.  As the officer caught up with the vehicle to conduct a traffic stop, it pulled into a gas station in the 1100 block of East Colorado Boulevard. 

Once the driver of the truck was finished pumping gas, he exited the gas station, but when the officer attempted to get near the vehicle in order to initiate a traffic enforcement stop, the truck pulled into a second gas station in the 300 block of South Verdugo. The driver got out of the truck and appeared to fill up with fuel. 

Again, once the driver of the truck finished pumping fuel, he entered the truck and drove out of the gas station, only to pull into a third gas station located in the 1400 block of East Colorado Boulevard. This time, the officer decided to detain the driver of the vehicle for the aforementioned violations. 

The driver was identified as Kenyatta Couch of Canoga Park.  The officer also learned that Mr. Couch was on felony probation. When the officer checked the license plate of the vehicle, he learned the plate did not belong to the truck he was driving and the truck was actually not registered. The officer also learned that Mr. Couch had a suspended license and should not have been driving at all.

Based on the provisions of Mr. Couch’s felony probation, the truck was searched. The officer found 143 various gift cards in the truck. A sampling of ten of these cards were tested and all were found to be re-encoded with the information of other people’s credit card information, which is a form of identity theft. 

Further investigation revealed that the bed of the truck had an approximately 500 gallon metal fuel bladder that was being used to store gasoline that had been purchased with the fraudulent gift cards. 

Mr. Couch was arrested for identity theft and driving on a suspended license. 

Kenyatta Couch, age 42