Sacramento accountant pleads guilty to Ponzi scheme

9 Mar 2010

William Murray, a Sacramento accountant who stole more than $13 million from 52 clients between 2001 and 2009, pleaded guilty today in federal court to mail fraud and interference with tax administration.

U. S. District Judge Edward J. Garcia ordered Murray to immediately be taken into custody by deputy U. S. marshals. The judge set sentencing for May 28.

Murray, 55, told clients to write checks to accounts under his control so he could pay taxes or make investments on their behalf. Much of the money went to support his extravagant lifestyle, including the purchase of real property, a classic car, a fleet of limousines, expensive jewelry and rugs, and fine wines.

He changed his clients' addresses to his own so they would not receive the IRS' delinquent tax notices.

As demands for payment arrived from clients and the IRS, Murray's fraud became a Ponzi scheme that he perpetuated by using more than $3.5 million in recent client receipts to pay off demands stemming from earlier theft.

Before the house of cards collapsed, Murray was a man of some prominence. He was a certified public accountant with a solid client base.

He regularly offered tax advice on a local television channel. He was used as an expert witness in courts in five counties.

He served as a federal tax agent between 1976 and 1980, when he moved to Sacramento to join a former IRS colleague in private practice.

Murray's plea agreement calls for the forfeiture of all his remaining assets to the government, victim restitution, and full disclosure of his finances to the victims.

Weed Wars: Sacramento airport pot patient jailed after felony conviction

9 Mar 2010

Matthew Zugsberger, with his lawyer Grant Pegg, was convicted today of felony transportation of marijuana for attempting to take three pounds of pot onto a Sacramento flight to New Orleans in December, 2008. The former deep sea diver says he has used marijuana to treat his pain since crushing vertebrae in an oil platform accident.

Matthew Zugsberger, an injured former oil rig worker and medical marijuana user, was convicted today of felony transportation of marijuana for attempting to take three pounds of pot onto a Sacramento flight to New Orleans in December, 2008.

Zugsberger, 34, who had a Mendocino County physician's recommendation for five pounds of pot, was considered a test case for how much marijuana a patient may possess for reasonable personal use.

Last month, the California Supreme Court threw out California limits on the amount of plants or dried marijuana medical users can have at any time.

The Supreme Court ruled that the Legislature improperly amended the Proposition 215 medical marijuana law without the consent of voters. Yet the decision still allowed authorities to arrest medical cannabis patients suspected of possessing pot for sale or exceeding state or local possession guidelines.

After intense deliberations that lasted twice as long as his trial, a jury acquitted Zugsberger of a felony count of possession for sale. But it convicted him of felony transportation as well as misdemeanor possession.

Zugsberger, who could receive four years in prison on the felony count, was immediately taken into custody in the courtroom.

Sacramento Superior Court Judge Roland Candee set his sentencing for April 8.

2 Hiram Johnson students arrested in hoax 911 calls

9 Mar 2010

Sacramento police cited two Hiram Johnson High School students Monday after they made hoax calls to 911 that a teacher on campus was going to get shot, according to authorities.

The first call came in about 9 a.m., said Sgt. Norm Leong. The students made several threats, using the same cell phone, between classes, Leong said.

Police initially suspected the calls to be a hoax, Leong said, but nonetheless took the threats seriously.

School resources officers responded to the campus and quickly traced the calls back to the students, Leong said.

In the meantime, campus officials closed off all but one entry point to the school, asked teachers to close their doors and brought physical education classes inside, the sergeant said.

Officers cited the students for reporting a false emergency, Leong said, and confiscated the cell phone.

Trial opens on deadly Elk Grove shooting spree

9 Mar 2010

Aaron Norman Dunn faces a trial starting Oct. 5 in two Elk Grove killings and could receive a death penalty. News10

The prosecutor concluded his opening statement in the Aaron Norman Dunn murder trial today with a phone message the defendant purportedly left for his estranged wife that portrayed him yelling "yee-haw" just moments after authorities said he shot and killed the first of his two victims in Elk Grove four years ago.

Sirens and gunshots punctuated the background while Lynrd Skynrd's hard-charging "Whiskey Rock and Roller" and the haunting "Simple Man" blared inside the white Toyota Cressida. It was that vehicle that Deputy District Attorney Scott Triplett said Dunn careened down Laguna Boulevard in his homicidal blast the night of March 25, 2006.

When his spree was over, television cameraman Johnie Ray Johnson, 46, and Xerox salesman Michael John Daly, 45, were shotgunned to death on evenings they spent at popular Elk Grove restaurants, Johnson with his wife and Daly with his wife and two children.

"The evidence in this case, ladies and gentlemen, is compelling," Triplett told the seven-man, five-woman Sacramento Superior Court jury. "There was no question what was done in this case and who did it."

Dunn, 33, is facing the death penalty if he is convicted and jurors return the capital punishment verdict in the penalty phase of his trial in front of Judge Michael W. Sweet.

Assistant Public Defender Amy Rogers conceded that Dunn shot and killed Johnson and Daly, but she said the case will be decided on her client's mental state, which she said was upended by heavy methamphetamine ingestion.

Rogers said she will try to prove that her client is only guilty of second-degree murder.

The defense lawyer said that Dunn had lived a fairly normal working man's life and that he was married and had a child. But Dunn began to unravel when his wife "became involved with two different men she met on the Internet," Rogers said.

According to Rogers, Dunn found it "devastating" when his wife moved out with their daughter, and it was then that he began to use methamphetamine.

"His life spun out of control," Rogers said, with the heavy drug use making him delusional to the point where "he snapped."

Rogers said she will present expert testimony that Dunn "suffered from a methamphetamine-induced psychotic state" and that he had "lost touch with reality."

Triplett said that Dunn tore off on a methamphetamine-laced shooting spree because he was upset over the impending break-up of his marriage. The prosecutor said Dunn's estranged wife, Sara Pack, is scheduled to testify in the case, but he told the jury "it's unlikely you'll like her."

According to Triplett, Pack visited Dunn in the Sacramento County Jail about five months after the shooting and that he told her about "his lack of mental problems, and how they were going to say it was the drugs" that caused him to commit the killings.

In evidence the prosecution likely will use to thwart a possible mental-incapacity defense Dunn's attorneys might use, Triplett said that Dunn also told Pack during their conversation that "I might have been a little over the edge, but I wasn't totally."

Beside the two murder counts, Dunn also is facing eight attempted murder charges, including six separate counts related to three attacks that prosecutors say he launched on Elk Grove police officers Trisha Smith and Janell Bestpitch. It was Smith and Bestpitch who finally stopped Dunn, authorities said, shooting and seriously wounding him after his final assault on them.

Triplett said that Dunn first shot Daly while the victim drove his family onto Laguna Boulevard from the parking lot of the Chili's restaurant at Bruceville Road, where they had just attended a birthday party.

The defendant then drove up on Smith and Bestpitch and shot through the rear window of their patrol car, Triplett said. Then Dunn continued eastbound on Laguna, where he crashed into a truck while leaning out of his car, holding his shotgun with hands and firing at a couple out on a date - blasts that the prosecutor said were caught on the phone message.

After the crash, Dunn got out of his car while gunshots and sirens were recorded on his phone, to the background music of Lynrd Skynrd, Triplett said. Then the defendant walked through the parking lot of a McDonald's fast-food restaurant at Laguna Boulevards at Laguna Springs Drive and circled back through the Mandango's parking lot where he came across Johnson and his wife, according to the prosecutor.

Triplett said the attack on Johnson was captured on a surveillance video.

"You will see the defendant walk into view, and you'll see what happens," Triplett told the jury. "The last words (Johnson's wife) heard from her husband were, 'Man, get that thing out of my face,' and the next thing (she) heard was a tremendous explosion, a point-blank shot to the face."

Witnesses said that after the shooting, Dunn left the parking lot in a "canter," Triplett said, "raising the shotgun in victory," while "there were pieces of John Johnson strewn about that parking area."

Smith and Bestpitch, meanwhile, had driven back to the site of the collision and finally dropped Dunn to the asphalt with their service revolvers, Triplett said, but not until the defendant left "a mountain of destruction" behind him in the early Elk Grove evening, according to the prosecutor.

Schwarzenegger puts stop to destruction of sex offender files

9 Mar 2010

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today ordered state corrections officials to stop destroying the parole files of sex offenders and to move to make public as much of their contents as possible.

The move comes in the wake of outrage over the arrest in San Diego of a paroled sex offender whose file had been destroyed as part of a corrections department policy that called for such papers to be shredded one year after an offender is discharged from parole. It also follows The Bee's successful lawsuit to force corrections officials to turn over parole records kept for Phillip Garrido, the convicted rapist and kidnapper who is charged with abducting and raping 11-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard in 1991.

"The current practice of not keeping information on sex offenders in California is unacceptable," said Schwarzenegger. "It is in the best interest of public safety to retain all information on these individuals and to make as much information as possible available and transparent. I have directed my Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to end this practice and immediately begin keeping all sex offender parolee files."

Corrections spokesman Oscar Hidalgo said that there are typically 9,000 sex offenders on parole on any given day and that those who are discharged had much of their parole files destroyed after one year. Pertinent information about violations or problems was sent to be kept in a central corrections file, he said, but the department now will cease shredding such parole files and retain them.

Wife's lover faces sentencing in El Dorado County murder

9 Mar 2010

Jaime Ramos

The second person charged in the 2008 murder of an El Dorado County man is to be sentenced Monday.

Jaime Ramos, 22, pleaded guilty in July 2009 to first-degree murder of Garden Valley resident Ron Presba, but sentencing was delayed pending his testimony in the trial of his co-defendant, Presba's wife.

Patricia Ann Presba, 49, pleaded guilty to first degree murder in January. Last week, El Dorado Superior Court Judge James R. Wagoner sentenced her to 25 years to life in prison for the murder of her husband and life with possibility of parole for the attempted murder of Ramos. She also received a 10-year enhancement for use of a firearm.

According to prosecutors, Presba and Ramos were lovers.

Firefighters battling a wildland fire along Highway 193 near Kelsey found Ron Presba's body June 25, 2008, inside a charred sport-utility vehicle in a ravine.

A month later, Patricia Presba vanished from the couple's Garden Valley home.

A friend found the front door of the home open and covered in blood. More blood later was discovered inside the house, authorities said.

A day after Patricia Presba was reported missing, a Utah Motor Vehicle Enforcement officer was looking for stolen vehicles at a Salt Lake City motel and found a vehicle sought in connection with Patricia Presba's disappearance.

Investigators found her and Ramos inside the motel. When the two were arrested, Ramos had three gunshot wounds and Patricia Presba had stab wounds to her arms. Both were later extradited to El Dorado County.

Ramos is scheduled for sentencing at 10 a.m. Monday in El Dorado Superior Court in Placerville.

Update: Woman killed driving golf cart identified

9 Mar 2010

A 47-year-old woman who died in a traffic accident earlier this while driving a golf cart in Sutter County was identified today by sheriff's officials.

The woman, Claudia Miller, a resident of the Robbins area in Sutter County, was hit Monday at the intersection of Del Monte Avenue and Highway 113. She died at the scene.

The California Highway Patrol said Miller, who was traveling east on Del Monte in the golf cart, failed to yield the intersection right-of-way to the driver of a pickup. The pickup was northbound on Highway 113 at about 55 mph.

The pickup's driver, Ruben Ramirez, Jr., 23, of Winters saw the golf cart only a second or two before impact, authorities say. He then tried to avoid the collision but struck the cart in the northbound lane of the highway.

A CHP press release said the golf cart was not licensed for highway use. It was not equipped with seat belts.

It is unclear if Miller stopped at the stop sign before attempting to cross Highway 113. Anyone who may have observed the golf cart prior to the collision is asked to call the Yuba-Sutter CHP office at (530) 674-5141.