Eleanor Zapanta, 51, the former business manager at the Center for Spiritual Living, had been wanted since prosecutors filed a 14-count criminal complaint against her last week.

Under an arrangement with her lawyer, Richard Scott, she appeared before a Sonoma County judge and was taken into custody.

Scott said he would visit Zapanta and review the charges before her Wednesday arraignment.

“She’s a good person and feels terrible about the accusations against her,” Scott said. “She’s said to me she wants to work hard to resolve this.”

Zapanta is accused of stealing the money from 2004 to 2010 through more than 250 unauthorized check transactions.

www.pressdemocrat.com

By T.W. Farnam, Wednesday, September 14, 4:45 PM

Several California Democrats are trying to recover from the loss of embezzled campaign money, and they could be on the hook for federal fines.

The case centers around California bookkeeper Kinde Durkee, who prosecutors allege committed fraud while serving as a treasurer for political campaigns.

Prosecutors say that Durkee, who was arrested Sept. 2, took $677,000 out of the account of a state assemblyman and transferred money into accounts held by Reps. Loretta Sanchez and Susan A. Davis. Some of the money was used to make payroll for Durkee’s firm and to cover personal expenses, including a nursing home bill for her mother, according to prosecutors.

A lawyer for Durkee did not return a call requesting comment on the charges. FBI agents said in an affidavit that Durkee admitted misappropriating her clients’ money.

Durkee serves as treasurer for 87 federal campaign committees, including that of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), records show. The committees together held $6.6 million.

Durkee also worked for more than 100 state-level campaigns in California and many nonprofit groups. The organizations include the Latino Diabetes Association and the Poker Voters of America.

In all, Durkee had control of more than 400 bank accounts, according to the complaint filed Sept. 2 in federal court in Sacramento.

Unraveling the transfers between accounts will be complicated. The complaint alleges that Durkee was able to keep the subterfuge secret for years by shifting money among accounts.

“There’s potential that this whole sordid mess stretches back a long time,” said Bill Carrick, a consultant to Feinstein, who has used Durkee as a bookkeeper for five campaigns over two decades. “Really, no one has any idea.”

Carrick would not comment on whether Feinstein was affected by the scandal, he said, because the campaign account had been frozen and he was unable to examine any transfers.

The bulk of Feinstein’s federal campaign money, about $5 million, had been under Durkee’s control, federal records show. Feinstein, who is running for reelection next year, has a large base of supporters and has used her personal wealth to fund her campaigns in the past.

This could prove to be the biggest in a string of recent embezzlement cases, which have affected both parties as the cost of political campaigns has surged in the past decade. In 2010, the winners in the House each spent $1.4 million on average, more than triple the figure two decades ago, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Responding to the wave of fraud, the Federal Election Commission has said it will not pursue complaints against campaigns over disclosure documents falsified by employees — as long as campaigns already had basic safeguards in place. Those should include having two people sign checks for more than $1,000 and requiring that an outside person reconcile reports with bank statements.

Such controls probably would have caught the fraud alleged in Durkee’s case.

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By JASON DEAREN, Associated Press – Sept 1, 2011

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A former payroll manager for the San Francisco Giants has been arrested on federal charges associated with embezzling more than $1.5 million from the baseball club's employees, including players, and using the money for fancy cars and a new home.

Robin O'Connor, 41, was confronted by the team in July and acknowledged diverting more than $600,000 from two Giants employees, a criminal complaint filed last month in U.S. District Court in San Francisco said. An affidavit filed by an FBI special agent states that the club immediately fired her.

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Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.



Sheila Accornero is suspected of writing checks to herself and hiding money through accounting techniques during the five years she managed the books for the Kid Street Learning Center Charter School on Davis Street, Sgt. Michael Lazzarini said.

“It appears that all the money went to drugs,” said Lazzarini, who runs the property crimes unit. “That's a huge habit. And just with the sheer quantity found at the time of her arrest ... . She had a lot with her.”

Accornero, 42, the school's finance and business manager, was arrested Tuesday afternoon at the school and is being held without bail on suspicion of embezzlement, forgery and burglary.

She had prescription narcotics, including Vicodin and hydrocodone, in her possession, a violation of her probation for a prior drug related-conviction in 2009, police officials said.

www.pressdemocrat.com

By DANN DENNY |The Herald-Times

11:41 AM CDT, May 30, 2008

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - The elderly woman made a terrible mistake in judgment -- she trusted her daughter.

The woman granted her daughter power of attorney. The daughter promptly deeded her mother's home to herself, mortgaged the home and defaulted on the mortgage.

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3/3/09

Two elderly Lovejoy sisters say they were no match for a smooth-talking home-improvement contractor with a history of fleecing older women.

Joseph M. Ralston persuaded the sisters to borrow more than $21,000 on their credit cards to replace a chimney he claimed was in disrepair, police say.

About a month ago, Ralston stopped by 85-year-old Dorothy Pannullo’s William Street home and told her 70-year-old sister, Carolyn Stevens, their chimney was falling apart, the sisters recalled Monday, a day after Ralston was arrested.

Ralston allegedly showed up with a crew of men who scaled the roof of the two-story house and began chipping away at the bricks and mortar joints to prove the chimney was in danger of toppling.

“He said our whole chimney needed to be torn down because it was bad,” Stevens said.

When she tried to argue that his men had just loosened the chimney with their hammers, she said, Ralston ignored her.

Pannullo says she feels she and her sister didn’t have a chance once Ralston had set his sights on them.

Twice, Ralston has spent time in state prison for stealing thousands of dollars from senior citizens in home-improvement scams that span two decades.

Nine years ago, when he was sent to prison for scamming three different women in Cheektowaga and Buffalo out of a total of $16,000, he had told the judge he needed professional treatment for his drug addiction.

In 1993, he was arrested for a home-improvement scam in the Town of Tonawanda that, authorities said, involved a group of individuals who had charged an 89-year-old Lackawanna woman $1,600 to fix three leaky faucets. In another case, a 90-year-old Lackawanna woman was billed for repairing a chimney that didn’t exist.

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