Imposters

Four cable television company employees are getting an extra week's pay for putting a couple of cable installers out of work. The installers, say police, were imposters, calling on homes in the Eagle Rock area where they collected fees of $50 to $65 for bringing in channel selector boxes, climbing up nearby power poles and going through other routines. Unfortunately, according to detectives, they never connected anything.

Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter showed no emotion Wednesday as he was found guilty of murdering his landlady's adult son nearly three decades ago. The victim's sister dabbed her eyes with a tissue after the verdict. “It's finally over,” she said. Prosecutors accused Gerhartsreiter of killing John Sohus in 1985 and burying his body in a 3-foot-deep grave in the backyard of his San Marino home. FULL COVERAGE: Rockefeller imposter on trial “The defendant wanted John Sohus dead and he accomplished his goal,” Deputy Dist.

Two members of a Los Angeles family were bound and robbed Tuesday by masked gunmen who stole into their home, the second time in two days that disguised bandits have held up residents in their homes, authorities said. In the first incident, six men posing as police officers talked their way into a Bell home on Monday, handcuffed the residents and robbed them of jewelry and about $7,000 cash, said Bell Police Detective Hector Camacho.

A German native who consorted for years with New England's social elite by pretending to be a Rockefeller was convicted Wednesday in Los Angeles of first-degree murder, capping a nearly three-decade-old mystery involving a missing couple and a body buried in a San Marino backyard.   Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, 52, was accused of bludgeoning his landlady's adult son with a blunt object and then digging a 3-foot-deep grave in the backyard of the victim's home. The body was buried behind a guest house where Gerhartsreiter had been living.

California's grape-switching scandal broadened Monday when the state Attorney General's Office announced that it has filed five more lawsuits against San Joaquin Valley agricultural companies alleging that cheap wine grapes were substituted for expensive grapes.

The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday accused 10 men of taking part in illegal commodities trading schemes, including one in which wigs, makeup and phony credentials were used to gain access to the trading pits at one exchange. U.S. Attorney Anton Valukas said the four unrelated cases resulted from an investigation begun more than 18 months ago "to monitor possible commodities fraud in the marketplace and elsewhere."

Two men flashing "police-type badges" approached a car in rush-hour traffic Tuesday afternoon, ordered a man and a woman to get out and then drove off in the car, police said. The incident, which occurred at 5:28 p.m. in the 1600 block of West Lincoln Avenue, was the second carjacking in the city in the last five days.

Police issued a warning Thursday about an intruder who poses as a window washer and then robs elderly women in La Crescenta, Montrose and Glendale. His most recent victim, a 79-year-old woman, told police that she was the victim of burglary and had been sexually battered Wednesday. The man has entered at least 50 homes, sometimes by force, in the last three years, according to police. Authorities have been unable to determine the value of property lost.

In the rash of recent eulogies to former Cal basketball Coach Lou Campanelli, local sportswriters omit some pertinent facts. First, Cal had three dismal seasons under Campanelli, including last year's debacle. Second, despite its winning record, Cal is in the bottom half of a very mediocre Pac-10 Conference this year. Third, Cal's recent recruiting success coincides directly with the arrival of assistant and interim head coach Todd Bozeman, not Campanelli.

Searching for Sugar Man Sony, $30.99; Blu-ray, $35.99 Available on VOD beginning Tuesday Detroit-based singer-songwriter Sixto Diaz Rodríguez couldn't get any airplay in the U.S. in the '70s with his soulful, political folk-rock, but his 1970 album, "Cold Fact," inexplicably became a favorite among liberal whites in apartheid-ravaged South Africa. This fascinating, touching documentary tries to sort out the facts of Rodríguez's life from the legends - which among his South African fans included the rumor that his career ended with him committing suicide onstage.

Nicholas Barclay, a 13-year-old from San Antonio, had been missing for more than three years when he seemed to miraculously resurface in the custody of authorities in Spain in 1997. The Barclay family accepted him back into their home, even though this Nicholas looked little like the boy they had known and that he now spoke English with a heavy accent. Months later they discovered the person living with them was actually a 23-year-old France-born man named Frédéric Bourdin, who had spun an elaborate deception to pose as Nicholas.

A whole lot stranger than fiction, "The Imposter"is a documentary that's disturbing in ways only reality can manage. This is a train wreck you think you see coming, but no matter how prepared you are the nature and extent of the damage will overwhelm you. As directed by British documentarian Bart Layton, "The Imposter" tells the story of a dark-skinned French Algerian man, a world-class deceiver and manipulator, who managed to convince members of...

A French television station believed it had a scoop when a woman identifying herself as Syria's ambassador to France announced her resignation during an on-air telephone interview, saying she opposed her country's violent crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators. News station France 24 said the interview Tuesday evening was with Paris-based Ambassador Lamia Shakkour. "I can no longer support the cycle of extreme violence against unarmed civilians," the woman said. "I recognize the legitimacy of the people's demands for more democracy and freedom.

A man who allegedly treated more than 1,000 patients over a 14-month period in Santa Ana while assuming the identity of a California-licensed doctor has been arrested, authorities said Friday. Rigoberto Camacho Alvarez, 48, was arrested in San Diego, near his La Mesa home, and charged with practicing medicine without a license and identity theft, said Jim Kovash, supervising investigator in Orange County for the California Medical Board.

Three men posing as police officers assaulted five guests at a Buena Park motel early Tuesday morning, authorities said. One man, 28-year-old George Pichardo of Northridge was shot and pistol-whipped, Buena Park Police Sgt. Chris Nunez said. Nunez said the five men were in a room at the Gaslight Motel on Beach Boulevard around 1 a.m. Tuesday when they heard a knock on the door. Three men posing as officers forced their way into the room and ordered the victims to the floor.

President Bush was tricked earlier this year into taking a telephone call from a man who pretended to be Iran's President Hashemi Rafsanjani and who said he wanted to speak about U.S. hostages in Lebanon, the White House said Thursday. White House officials provided few details of the call but confirmed the incident after it was first reported Thursday evening on CBS News.

Incensed by the death of a Santa Ana toddler who had been treated by an apparently unlicensed doctor, a leader in Orange County's Latino community called Tuesday for an investigation into private clinics that cater to the immigrant population. "We must have a mechanism by which these very critically important so-called clinics are checked into," said Amin David, president of Los Amigos of Orange County. "Isn't there a mechanism in the city of Santa Ana?"

Advertiser: Foster Farms Agency: Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco Challenge: Transform the lowbrow Foster Imposter spokes-puppets into pitchmen for the company's two premium product lines. The Ads: In five TV ads, the scraggly Muppet-like chickens hatch new schemes to become Foster Farms chickens. In an ad for the 99% fat-free line, the overweight chickens attempt liposuction using a vacuum cleaner.