A judge sentenced a West Hollywood man, Jeffrey Craig Yohai, 37, to 110 months in federal prison for defrauding investors, lenders, friends and family members out of about $6.7 million, via a series of scams he ran while out on bond after pleading guilty in a prior federal case. Yohai pleaded gui...

            Three Saudi nationals have been charged in two separate indictments for allegedly violating federal export laws by purchasing more than $100,000 in weapons parts in the United States while on student visas and then smuggling the parts to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. All three defendan...

A jury convicted a gang member, Osiris Lenin Garfias Pedraza, 23 of first-degree murder in the 2017 killing of Jonathan Hernandez, 22, who had ties to a rival Anaheim gang.  Garfias Pedraza now faces a minimum sentence of life without the possibility of parole.  Garfias Pedraza was in one of thre...

            A federal grand jury has indicted two men in a scheme to obtain lawful permanent resident status for South Korean nationals by submitting fraudulent visa applications that falsely claimed American businesses wanted to hire skilled foreign workers.  The indictment alleges that the defe...

The Orange County DA's office charged five members of a University of California, Irvine fraternity, namely Sigma Alpha Episilon (SAE) in connection with the alcohol poisoning death of a fellow under aged fraternity member after a party in January. Zavier Larenz Brown, now 21, Jonathan Anephi Vu,...

            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...

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 jury found Oriyomi Sadiq Aloba, 33, a Texas man, guilty of hacking into the Los Angeles Superior Court (LASC) computer system, using the system to send approximately 2 million malicious phishing emails, and fraudulently obtaining hundreds of credit card numbers.  The judge gave hi...

         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...

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...

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 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...

             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...

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...

            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...

                  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...

A jury found Adam John Kanas, 39, of San Clemente, guilty of second degree murder for killing 10-year old Kendra Geddis on August 15, 2016, after driving erratically at 80 mph, swerving across several lanes on the I-405 in Seal Beach, and slamming into the back of the Tesla Geddis was riding in. ...

            The feds arrested  Edward Buck, 65, of West Hollywood for allegedly  providing methamphetamine to a man who died after receiving the drug intravenously. A federal criminal complaint charges him with one count of distribution of methamphetamine resulting in death. The complaint alleges...

The Edward Martin Rostohar, 62, the former manager of the CBS Employees Federal Credit Union pleaded guilty to one count of bank fraud.  The judge sentenced him to 169 months in federal prison for a twenty year embezzlement scheme that caused the credit union to lose $40 million and led the finan...

Former Santa Ana City Council Member Roman Reyna pleaded guilty to committing election fraud for submitting nomination papers under penalty of perjury that falsely claimed he lived at a residence within Santa Ana Ward 4 in order to run for that Ward's City Council seat in 2018. Reyna was elected ...

            Tanya Garcia, 40, of Whittier, CA worked as a paralegal at several Los Angeles and Riverside county immigration law firms. The law firms helped clients with immigration matter such as obtaining asylum, relief from deportation, U.S. residence and citizenship, and work permits. From Oct...

             Kunal Kalra, 25, aka “Kumar,” “shecklemayne” and “coinman” Kalra agreed to plead guilty to four felonies: distribution of methamphetamine, operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, laundering of monetary instruments, and failure to maintain an effective anti-money launderi...

The Orange County prosecutor charged a 51-year-old Huntington Beach man with lying in wait and fatally stabbing an administrator at Cal State University, Fullerton.  Fifty one year old, Chuyen Van Vo has been charged with stabbing his co-worker,  Steven Shek Keung, in a CSUF parking lot around 8:...

Questions: What were Myron and William thinking? Should they go to federal prison?  For how long?             A South Los Angeles man pleaded guilty today to a federal criminal charge and admitted to participating in two armed robberies of United States Postal Service trucks carrying tens of thou...

On August 7, 2019, Sherman Oaks, California native, Robert Shapiro, 61, pled guilty to orchestrating and leading a massive investment fraud scheme, in which more than 7,000 victims suffered financial losses, as well as tax evasion, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1349 and 26 U.S.C. § 7201.  Shapiro i...