LA’s rich and famous made ‘odd request’ of private armies as wildfires fueled fear, boss says

Some of the most wealthy and famous residents of Los Angeles are investing in private armies for protection as California continues to deal with the aftermath of the deadly wildfires and looters and scammers target affluent homeowners.

MPS Security is one of the security companies residents are turning to as they work to rebuild what they lost in the wildfires.

“When it first happened, they were only letting security companies up in the areas, so they were only letting people check on their houses if they could afford it,” Matthew Crider, executive protection manager at MPS Security, shared with Fox News Digital.

“I think that was kind of a downside. I felt like people didn’t know if their houses were still there. They had no power there. They probably use some type of camera system that needed power and definitely needed Wi-Fi, so that really did kind of take a toll on us.”

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Crider said they had clients who would ask them to check on a neighbor’s home and see if it was still standing, offering help to those who couldn’t afford private detail. His agents would take photos of the debris and send them back to their clients for proof of destruction and to try to help residents determine if they lost everything or still had a home.

“It’s extremely heartbreaking that that’s how they found out. But we did do a lot of them to where, ‘Hey, your house is still here. I mean there’s some damage to the fence or whatnot, but it’s still there,'” Crider explained. “So with that, it’s definitely hard. But we did do that for some of our clients that asked us to because we did feel that it was kind of unfair that only security companies could go do patrols, and you had to pay that company to go see if your house was OK.”

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Crider shared a new request that their team had never had before: protection for the debris.

“I have never gotten that type of request before, so it was definitely kind of different because we’re watching, in a way, just rubble. But they just didn’t want – they were wealthy individuals, and they just did not want their stuff to be gone,” Crider said.

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Crider said a lot of their clients also had safes, which he said are typically fireproof, that housed a lot of their clients’ most valuable items. 

The need for private security has increased for their company, Crider said, especially after the fires as people sought peace of mind that their belongings were safe.

“The police can only do so much, so we looked at the whole aspect of it and the clients want more of that security, and so they sleep better at night,” Crider explained. 

“I can only imagine being in that area and staying in your house, and you want to go through what’s left of it and afraid that, because of your status, someone’s going to go in and try to take stuff. It’s a heartbreaking type of thing on that one.”

Through the devastation, Crider said there has been some light and seeing the communities band together to protect each other from crime coming in.

“We’re running into a lot of houses, three or four different houses willing to pay for security for one agent to be out there. So they are coming together as a community for it. I mean, it’s really sad that they have to have security for something that has completely burnt down.”

Crider added that while his team deals with the physical aspects of crime, there are other crimes they are seeing and hearing about, including disaster relief fraud, scams and potential squatter situations.

“There’s a lot of different crimes that I was just reading about, one for FEMA fraud. People are saying that they’re the people living there, and they’re not really living there, and they’re trying to collect the money on it, which is cybercrime,” Crider said. 

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Another company that people are turning to in the wake of the wildfires is Covered Six.

The company said it has deployed a special response team to help those affected by the Los Angeles wildfires.

“The COVERED 6 Special Response Team has been deployed to the Palisades Wildfire area to support communities threatened by both the fire itself as well as the increased occurrence of crime in these areas,” the company wrote in an alert on their website. “There may be a delay in our ability to respond to inquiries during this time, and we will make every effort to respond in a timely manner.”

According to the company’s website, they provide “large scale support operations in all aspects of public safety.”

“The threatscape of public safety has changed. Volatility and uncertainty, are common and resources are thin. Being more nimble and less restricted, Covered 6 can quickly deploy a variety of solutions to assist the public mission,” the company website reads.

In response to the mounting crime occurring during the wildfires, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department said it increased security measures and announced the creation of the “Looter Suppression Team.”

“This dedicated unit is composed of personnel drawn from multiple LASD divisions, each bringing specialized expertise to combat looting and other criminal activities that can arise during times of community vulnerability,” according to a previous statement from the department. 

The team will operate with additional deputy personnel assigned to increase patrol operations, officials noted.

The agency’s AERO Bureau will conduct aerial patrols, providing enhanced surveillance and rapid response capabilities to ensure comprehensive coverage of the affected areas, according to the statement.

“Together, these efforts ensure continuous 24-hour patrolling to provide a consistent and visible law enforcement presence, particularly in neighborhoods still dealing with utility outages and heightened security risks,” officials said.

Fox News Digital’s Alexandra Koch contributed to this report.