Embezzlement

The former manager of the Yucca Valley Airport has pleaded guilty to embezzling $1.3 million in state money. Prosecutors say Richard Demel pleaded guilty to seven counts of embezzlement Monday in San Bernardino. Deputy Dist. Atty. Lewis Cope says Demel applied for a state grant to repair airport runways in 2003. When the check came, he deposited it in a new bank account and disappeared. Airport officials did not learn about the grant until 2007 when the governor's office called for a status report on the runways.

Do not pass go, do not collect $53 million: Former queen of the quarter horse world Rita Crundwell was headed straight to jail after her sentencing in federal court in Illinois on Thursday. Crundwell, 60, received 19 years and seven months in prison, completing her fall from grace as a high-rolling champion horse owner who funded her lavish lifestyle by using her job as the Dixon, Ill., comptroller, steering tens of millions of dollars from the city into her breeding operations.

Authorities have arrested a San Diego County bank employee on suspicion of looting $1.65 million from the account of a dead man and wiring the money to Mexico. San Diego County sheriff's officials said Wednesday that 22-year-old Diana Reyes was arrested at Washington Mutual's Spring Valley branch on charges of forgery, embezzlement and identity theft. She was released on bail.

A South Korean executive was sentenced to four years in prison Thursday for embezzling more than $40 million from his conglomerate, the third-largest of the massive and powerful chaebols that have long dominated the South Korean economy. SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won denied any wrongdoing and said he didn't know why he hadn't swayed the court. "I didn't do anything wrong. This is all I can say," the Yonhap news agency quoted Chey as saying. SK Group, in a statement cited by South Korean news reports, said it planned to appeal.

The former finance director and chief investment officer of Soka University of America has pleaded guilty to federal charges of embezzling nearly $1.8 million in university funds, authorities said Wednesday. Kiyoshi Hatanaka, 52, faces up to 10 years in federal prison at his sentencing Aug. 25. As the school's financing director from 1999 to 2006, prosecutors say, Hatanaka transferred the money from university banking and investment accounts to accounts he had created at California Bank and Trust.

The Lynwood Unified School District's former chief business officer was charged Thursday with embezzling more than $700,000 in public funds and filing false tax returns. William Douglas Agopian, 60, of Santa Ana allegedly used the money from a district bank account to pay for tickets to professional baseball games, gas and his personal taxes over a four-year period, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney's office. "The allegations do involve a significant violation of public trust involving funds that are intended for the students of the Lynwood Unified School District," said prosecutor Dana Aratani.

The onetime president of Goodwill Industries in Santa Clara County masterminded an embezzlement scheme that siphoned off millions of dollars in donations meant for job training for disabled people, according to a federal indictment unsealed this week. Andrew Liersch, 67, will go before a federal judge Friday to face charges of money-laundering and wire fraud, which prosecutors and Goodwill officials say cost the charity $26 million.

An Orange lawyer convicted of stealing from his clients to pay his gambling debts was sentenced Friday to eight years in state prison and ordered to repay more than $300,000 to his victims. After asking unsuccessfully to delay sentencing for two weeks so he could care for his ailing wife, who was also convicted in the thefts, attorney Leonard Basinger, 56, was taken into custody in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana.

Looking back now, Daniel Hernandez says he has a few regrets. But, then again, too few to mention. One month after he and his wife, an Orange County society couple, were arrested in connection with the disappearance of nearly $8 million from a Santa Fe Springs precious-metals firm, Hernandez wished only that he had hidden the money better.

Snooping abroad for clues to illicit plots is one of the CIA's primary missions, but the agency disclosed Friday that it had discovered a criminal operation embarrassingly close to home. Joseph P. Romello, 41, an upper-management CIA veteran of 12 years, pleaded guilty Friday to charges that he conspired to defraud the agency and the U.S. government of about $1.2 million, the Justice Department and the CIA announced. Acting on an anonymous tip to CIA Inspector General Frederick P.

A Santa Ana man was charged with fraudulently collecting more than $100,000 of his deceased father's Social Security benefits Tuesday after bones believed to be those of his father were found in the backyard of his former home, officials said. Larry Thomas Dominguez, 65, faces a felony count of theft by embezzlement, with sentencing enhancements for aggravated white-collar crime over $100,000, the Orange County district attorney's office announced. Dominguez's arraignment was postponed Tuesday.

MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin fired his defense minister Tuesday amid a criminal investigation of suspected fraud and embezzlement involving military assets. Putin announced his decision to dismiss Anatoly Serdyukov two weeks after the federal Investigative Committee said it was looking into the possible "fraudulent sale of real estate, land plots and stocks" belonging to the military. The investigation apparently already found the equivalent of more than $100 million in losses to the government, the committee said.

Anaheim police detectives didn't have to go far to find the latest victims of an apparent embezzlement scam. For five years, Cindy Ann Su'a sat in the Anaheim police union as officer manager, quietly stealing more than $360,000 from the organization's accounts, prosecutors charged Wednesday. She altered her paychecks, sometimes doubling her pay, and paid her bills from the Anaheim Police Assn.'s bank accounts, Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Marc Labreche said. "She was stealing our money and hiding the mail so we'd never find out … it was a shock," said Kerry Condon, the union president and a veteran homicide detective, who prosecutors credit with uncovering the alleged scheme.

The director of a Los Angeles city recreation center is facing felony charges after she allegedly stole up to $15,000 from the facility, including lunch money from children in her care. Carol Brandt, 47, who served as the director of the Montecito Heights Recreation Center northeast of downtown from 2008 to 2011, was charged Tuesday with embezzlement and misappropriation of public funds. She is accused of pocketing more than $10,000 from members of several basketball and soccer teams who paid to use the facility's courts and fields in 2009 and 2010.

The former president of California's biggest union local pleaded not guilty Monday to federal charges that he enriched himself by stealing from the low-income workers he represented. Tyrone Freeman, who headed Local 6434 of the Service Employees International Union, entered his plea to a 15-count indictment returned in July. A trial has been set for Nov. 20 in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. Freeman, 42, is free on $50,000 bail. The indictment includes allegations that he embezzled union funds, billed the organization for costs of his Hawaiian wedding, violated tax laws and gave false information to a mortgage lender.

A fugitive in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum corruption case says that for years he alerted his superiors to alleged criminal wrongdoing at the stadium, but they did nothing. In telephone and Skype interviews with The Times, former Coliseum contractor Tony Estrada, who has been charged with embezzlement and conspiracy, said a culture of self-dealing and fraud thrived at the taxpayer-owned stadium for more than a decade. "I did the right thing," Estrada said in one Skype session, speaking in the accent of his native Cuba.

In a public corruption scandal that has tarred one of the city's most treasured landmarks, six men were charged Friday with bilking the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum out of millions of dollars during a six-year spree of embezzlement, bribery and kickbacks. Among those named in a 29-count indictment were three former managers of the taxpayer-owned Coliseum and two of the nation's most prominent rave promoters, Insomniac Inc. Chief Executive Pasquale Rotella and Go Ventures Inc. head Reza Gerami.

A federal grand jury has indicted a Montebello firearms dealer and a former narcotics investigator as part of its continuing probe of corruption within the narcotics bureau of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. The nine-count indictment, announced Tuesday, charges that gun dealer George Papac laundered money stolen by narcotics investigators by buying cashier's checks.

U2 may have asked how to dismantle an atomic bomb on a recent album, but from 2004 to 2008 Carol Hawkins dismantled U2 bassist Adam Clayton's finances. Hawkins, a domestic aide Clayton hired to attend to his south Dublin mansion, was sentenced Friday for embezzling $3.6 million from Clayton's bank accounts to fund pricey purchases such as first-class flights, a car, university educations for her children and nearly two dozen thoroughbred horses. Hawkins had been found guilty last week on 181 counts of writing checks from Clayton's bank account for personal purchases, and Friday an Irish jury unanimously sentenced her to a seven-year sentence.

A fugitive in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum corruption case said he was in "the jungles of Brazil" and will not return to face trial in an alleged kickback scheme because he shouldn't have been charged. "Let 'em come over here and get me," Tony Estrada, a former Coliseum janitorial contractor who portrays himself as a whistle-blower done wrong, told The Times in a telephone interview. Estrada, who has been charged with embezzlement and conspiracy, said Monday he came forward more than a year ago with canceled checks and other evidence that showed he was making secret payments to the stadium's then-general manager, Patrick Lynch.