Julian Miles Mayers-Johnson, 32, a Venice man who sold the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl to a 19-year-old man who suffered a fatal overdose pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute fentanyl. On October 19, 2018, outside a fast-food restaurant in Venice, Mayers-Johnson knowingly...

            A US District Court judge sentenced Aquinas Kasbar, 19, of Newport Beach, to three months in federal prison for breaking into the Santa Ana Zoo after hours and stealing North America's oldest ring-tailed lemur in captivity to keep the endangered animal as his pet. Kasbar must also pay...

             Liu Cai, 24, a Woodland Hills man, pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges in connection with a scheme where Chinese nationals fraudulently obtained student visas by hiring people with fake Chinese passports to take an English proficiency test on their behalf. A 26-count federal g...

                  A jury found Diamond guilty of 15 counts of mail fraud affecting a financial institution and 15 counts of wire fraud affecting a financial institution.  The judge sentenced James Ignatius Diamond, 69, to 70 months in federal prison for defrauding hundreds of victims, mainly dist...

            Michael “Mickey” Henschel, 70, of Van Nuys, whom the feds called a long-time con artist got 240 months in federal prison for running a multimillion-dollar real estate scam that conned elderly people out of their homes, gouging them with fraudulent threats of litigation and extorting m...

Cameron Pettit, 28, of West Hollywood; Stephen Walter, 46, of Westwood; and Ryan Reavis, 36, a former West Los Angeles resident who relocated to Lake Havasu, Arizona earlier this year, were charged in a three-count indictment. All three defendants are charged with conspiring to distribute control...

A federal jury in South Florida convicted Brandon Michael Fleury, 22, of Santa Ana, California, of cybserstalking and sending a kidnapping threat to families of victims of a mass shooting in Parkland, Florida.  (18  U.S.C. §§ 875(c), 2261A) Fleury faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. F...

The Seal Beach Police arrested a former Chef, Darryl Lee Matanane, 55 in Midland, Texas. The police identifed Matanane as a suspect in the February 18, 2018 sexual assault. He was released pending further investigation.  After further investigation, the police arrested him. The prosecutor charged...

A federal district court judge sentenced Beverly Hills businessman, Teymour Khoubian, to 21 months in prison for filing false tax returns, which failed to report his offshore accounts in Germany and Israel and the income earned on those accounts. Khoubian filed false tax returns for tax years 200...

         A Manhattan Beach man, Adam Joiner, pleaded guilty to a fraud charge and admitted bilking foreign investment groups out of $14 million by falsely claiming the money would be used to produce a feature film that Netflix would distribute. He faces 20 years in federal prison.  (Doubtful that...