A 44-year-old Menifee man has been charged with using Instagram to locate the addresses of about 30 female Orange County college students and stealing panties and other personal effects from their residences.
Arturo Galvan, a married father of three preteen girls, has been held without bail since the Orange County District Attorney’s office charged him with 33 counts of first-degree burglary and one count of attempted burglary, all felonies, and misdemeanor counts of resisting arrest and vandalism.
He could face up to 50 years in prison if convicted, according to OCDA spokeswoman Roxi Fyad.
Galvan would hang out in public areas around Orange and Fullerton, search for social media posts where people had “checked in” with their location and then look through their other posts on Instagram or Facebook to use the GPS data attached to some images to map the location of their homes, according to Fullerton Police Sgt. Kathryn Hamel.
For burglaries that began May 22 and continued through Dec. 3, Galvan broke into sorority-owned housing or off-campus apartments of female students at Chapman University and Cal State Fullerton, Fyad alleged.
Galvan broke in while the co-eds mostly were away to steal bras and panties—some clean, some out of the hamper. If any of them has “Pink” stitched on them, gives whole new meaning to The Pink Panther.
Other types of clothes, personal photos, planners, jewelry, laptops, TVs and tablet devices were also taken, Fyad claimed, and Hamel says that male underwear and personal belongings were also stolen and that some victims slept through the thefts.
A Fullerton police officer interrupted Galvan as he was peeping into a window on Dec. 3, and he was arrested later that day while breaking
into a car, Fyad alleged.
Stolen electronics and other items were found in Galvan’s Menifee home and hot underwear was located in a garage next door, Hamel said.
At the time of Galvan’s arrest, Hamel said there was a “sexual overtone” to the thefts.
Galvan is due back in court on Feb. 23 for a pretrial hearing.
