Two former Dodger Stadium security guards, third man charged in plot to steal team merchandise

LOS ANGELES – Two former Dodger Stadium security guards and a third man pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges stemming from an alleged plot to steal baseball equipment and other items from secured areas at the ballpark.

Former guards Juan DeDios Prada, 58, of Palmdale, and Fernando Sierra, 62, of Lancaster, and co-defendant Jesse Luis Dagnesses, 51, of Huntington Park, are charged with one felony count of conspiracy to commit burglary.

Prada and Sierra are also charged with one felony count of second-degree commercial burglary, while Dagnesses is charged with one felony count of receiving stolen property exceeding $950 in value.

The criminal complaint alleges that the three “conspired to take baseball equipment, uniforms and fan-giveaway bobbleheads from the locked equipment room and other secured areas” within Dodger Stadium in an effort to sell the items online for profit.

“Prada and Sierra used masks, gloves and headlamps to enter a locked equipment room and steal more than $3,400 worth of equipment between January 2013 to February 2016,” prosecutors alleged in a news release from the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

Numerous Dodgers bats, Major League Baseball baseballs and jerseys that had been stolen from the Dodgers’ equipment room were found by Los Angeles police during a search of Dagnesses’ home in February 2016, according to prosecutors.

The three defendants are due back in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom Feb. 16 for a pretrial hearing.

Prada and Sierra could face more than three years in jail if convicted as charged, while Dagnesses could face more than four years behind bars, according to the District Attorney’s Office.

The case against a fourth man who had been charged along with them was dismissed earlier this month.

–