Articles Posted in Criminal

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According to the L.A. Daily News, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Christopher Cox said his agency neglected to pursue allegations of wrongdoing by Bernard L. Madoff, the alleged perpetrator of a $50 billion Ponzi scheme for the last ten years. As a result, Cox ordered a probe by the SEC’s inspector general, saying the agency’s staff had never brought the Madoff matter to the attention of commissioners.

Madoff, the former chairman of the NASDAQ Stock Market, was arrested December 11th and charged with a single count of securities fraud, which if proved, may rank among the biggest frauds ever—totaling $50 billion of fraudulent losses. A Ponzi scheme—sometimes called a pyramid scheme—is a fraudulent investment operation where investors receive abnormally high returns out of the money paid in by subsequent investors, rather than from the profit from any real business.

Many of the investors allegedly swindled by the Wall Street money manager are Jewish philanthropists and non-profit organizations. The Daily News article states that the effect of the loss to Jewish philanthropic world is nothing less than “catastrophic,” however at this time it doesn’t appear the fraud has had any effect on Los Angeles organizations.

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A Riverside man who was jailed for two years as a suspect in 40 arson fires has sued Riverside Fire Department officials and a dog handler who linked him to the crimes by using a controversial device intended to pick up human scent at crime scenes. Michael Espalin is now asking for damages in a federal lawsuit he filed in Santa Ana.

The only evidence brought against him at his criminal trial was a bloodhound named Dakota–whose handler said the dog found Espalin’s scent at the fires days and weeks after they were set in 2004. According to the lawsuit, there was no physical evidence or eyewitness linking Espalin to any of the fires.

According to the LA Times, Espalin is at least the sixth person in Southern California cleared since 1996 after being linked to a crime by the “scent transfer unit STU-100”– a machine that supposedly transfers human scent from an object at a crime scene to a 5- by 9-inch gauze pad. The pad is then put to a bloodhound’s nose, and the dog theoretically follows the scent to the suspect. The machine and the dogs used with it have led to false arrests in several high-profile cases including an Irvine man whose murder conviction was thrown out by a judge who said the machine was scientifically unreliable. In addition, a Long Beach man arrested as a serial rapist was cleared by DNA tests. And a Buena Park man sent to prison for a carjacking was freed when DNA from the crime scene was matched to a man already in custody for another carjacking.

Unable to post $500,000 bail, Espalin spent two years in county jail awaiting trial.

More than $2.3 million has been paid out in lawsuits stemming from some of the cases.

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In May, the former director of UCLA’s Willed Body Program, Henry Reid, was indicted by a grand jury for selling body parts to businessman Ernest Nelson who resold them to medical research companies. The LA Times reports that today, Mr. Reid plead guilty to felony charges that he damaged or destroyed property worth more than $1 million and conspiracy to commit grand theft in a “body-parts-for-profit” scheme.

The Times reports that from 1999 to 2004, Reid and businessman Ernest Nelson conspired to defraud the program of its donor bodies for personal financial gain. Reid allegedly sold human body parts from UCLA’s program to Nelson and then deposited thousands of dollars of proceeds of those sales into his personal bank account.

Reid, an Anaheim native, will be sentenced to four years, four months in state prison under a plea crafted by the District Attorney’s Office. In exchange, Reid agreed to cooperate with the prosecution in their case against Nelson. Reid will also be required to pay restitution to UCLA’s Willed Body Program of between $100,000 to $1 million. He will be sentenced in January.

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According to a recent study, immigrants—including immigrants living in Orange County—are far less likely than the average U.S.-born citizen to commit crime in California. The Public Policy Institute of California report, that can be found here, said that while people born outside the United States make up about 35 percent of California’s adult population they only account for about 17 percent of the adult prison population.

The findings suggest that long-standing fears that immigration jeopardizes public safety are unjustified. The report also noted that U.S.-born adult men are incarcerated at a rate more than 2 1/2 times greater than that of foreign-born men.

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University of Southern California cornerback Shareece Wright has been charged by San Bernardino law enforcement with resisting a police officer in connection to a party in his hometown of Colton last weekend. Resisting police a police officer using force or violence is a felony in California.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Wright attended a party for someone being deployed to Iraq labor-day weekend. Police detained Wright at the party, but he was not among several people arrested in the early morning hours on Sunday. The San Bernardino District Attorney subsequently filed charges against him and three others. His arraignment is scheduled for Wednesday.

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I couldn’t make this up if I tried. Last Saturday, two California farmworkers awoke to a burglar in their kitchen applying spices to a sausage. After using the sausage to attack the victims, the stranger fled with the owners’ money. Police later found the California man wearing only his boxers and socks in a nearby field and were able to identify him as the sausage-wielding perpetrator, since he left his wallet behind at the victims’ house. The full article can be found here.

In what would seem to be an open and shut case for prosecutors has one catch- the sausage tossed away by the fleeing suspect was subsequently eaten by a dog.

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One Ventura County man seems determined to crash the party at the Playboy Mansion- literally. The Los Angeles Daily News reports that a man crashed his car into the gates of Hugh Hefner’s notorious party palace twice this past week. It is unclear whether Hefner or his three girlfriends were home during the incident, but Los Angeles police reported no injuries, only damage to the gates.

The suspect was arrested and released after the first crash last Thursday night, the police spokesperson said. He then slammed his car into the gates again Tuesday, but fled before police arrived on the scene. Police have not released the man’s name or what may have prompted the crashes, but it’s likely that he’s charged with a felony for his behavior. Comments about this post can be directed to Orange County Criminal Defense Attorney William Weinberg at (714) 834-1400.