Archive for August, 2009

A woman who has been charged in the DUI death of a Westlake teenager in 2003 is asking the state Court of Appeals whether her dementia precludes her from standing trial in the case. Diana Shakhov, 37, suffers from an incurable form of dementia and was involved in a rear-end accident on Thousand Oaks Boulevard [...]

A federal grand jury has been convened to determine whether Los Angeles City Councilman Jose Huizar and former Board of Education member Dave Tokofsky received bribery payments in the form of improper consulting fees paid by a non-profit organization known as the Voter Improvement Program.
The president of the organization, Miguel Contreras, died in 2005, [...]

A real estate appraiser and a mortgage broker have been convicted in a $40 million real estate fraud plan. Another real estate agent was acquitted on 13 charges, and the judge declared a mistrial on the remaining eight counts. Eight other defendants pleaded guilty to fraud charges related to their roles in the plot.
The [...]

Barbara Hoke, 51, is facing charges of theft for allegedly stealing a dog. Hoke faces one grand theft charge of stealing a dog, a felony. Additionally, Hoke faces charges of filing a false police report and another charge of animal abuse.
Hoke was issued a citation in July for not having the proper permits to [...]

A Los Angeles man who emigrated to the US illegally from Russia has been convicted for his part in a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme. Viacheslav Berkovich was sentenced to 4 years and 7 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $2.7 million in restitution after being convicted of perpetrating a scheme directed at independent truck [...]

Richard Ballard, 58, of Camarillo was sentenced to two years in prison following his conviction on charges that he downloaded Internet child pornography to a public computer terminal in the Camarillo Library. Ballard was arrested in April 2008 after a patron complained to a librarian that Ballard appeared to be downloading child pornography to the [...]

Grand theft charges have been filed against David Egedi, the former fire chief of the Fillmore Fire Department. The charges are the result of an investigation into Egedi’s handling of department funds. The Ventura County Sheriff’s Office was called to investigate potential embezzlement from the department. Egedi was put on administrative leave when the [...]

Federal and state officials, using a state warrant, raided two medical marijuana dispensaries and arrested the owner, Jeffery Joseph, 40 of Topanga Canyon. Joseph is accused of possessing more than 50 pounds of marijuana for sale.
Police confiscated 452 live plants in two locations, more than 100 pounds of hashish and more than $103,000 in [...]

Anthony Pendleton, a former tax preparer from Los Angeles, was convicted of fraud in a scheme to inflate filers’ refunds. Pendleton filed false returns on behalf of clients, reducing income and increasing the number of dependents to create larger tax returns. Pendleton, who at one time had worked for the Internal Revenue Service, owned [...]

A Ventura County man pleaded not guilty to 11 felony weapons charges after a grand jury handed down indictments last month. Jeffrey Fennell, 39, is being held on charges of assault on a peace officer, shooting into an inhabited dwelling, assault with a firearm and discharging a firearm with gross negligence following a domestic [...]