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A Foresthill man pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday on charges of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. Jason Allen Smith, 47, schemed to defraud Raley’s Family of Fine Stores, U.S. Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner announced in a press release. A former contract employee, Smith conspired with Raley’s former Director of Advertising David John [...]
April 15 9:23 a.m. A $3000 outboard motor was stolen off a boat while the boat was parked outside a repair shop on Greenstone Road in El Dorado. A vehicle at the repair shop was also tampered with. 11:50 a.m. A 23-year-old female victim reported petty theft from a vehicle by unknown suspect(s) on Country [...]
April 1 8:55 a.m. A 46-year-old male suspect stole a trailer that was parked in the 54-year-old male victim’s garage on Mule Deer Circle in South Lake Tahoe. 12:01 p.m. A suspect used fear to take medication from a pharmacy on Missouri Flat Road in Placerville. The suspect, David Smith, 32, was located and arrested. [...]
Jan. 24 12:31 a.m. A 45-year-old male reported a physical altercation with his 42-year-old wife on Piazza Place in El Dorado Hills. The female could not be located. 5:23 a.m. Deputies responded to a residence on Pony Express Trail in Camino regarding a vehicle burglary report. A screwdriver was collected at the scene. No suspect [...]
I know, I know, to many of you the idea of decorating an empty room feels as horrifying as one of those dreams where you’re suddenly in public naked. But I’m going to fix that. Although decorating a room from scratch is intimidating, here’s the truth: If you can dress, you can decorate. Stay with me. [...]
“All we want to do is reopen,” said Beth DeCaprio, executive director of The Grace Foundation of Northern California. The El Dorado Hills rescue group temporarily closed its programs, lessons, clinics and volunteer hours on Oct. 11, 2012. The January 2013 volunteer training was canceled. DeCaprio said the foundation has continued to care for all [...]
By Dave Barry
McClatchy Newspapers
(MCT)
It was a cruel, cruel year — a year that kept raising our hopes, only to squash them flatter than a dead possum on the interstate.
Example: This year the “reality” show “Jersey Shore,” which for six hideous seasons has been a compelling argument in favor of a major earth-asteroid collision, finally got canceled, and we dared to wonder if maybe, just maybe, we, as a society, were becoming slightly less stupid.
But then, WHAP, we were slapped in our national face by the cold hard frozen mackerel of reality in the form of the hugely popular new “reality” show…
A former El Dorado Hills man was indicted on charges of mail fraud and money laundering and was scheduled to be arraigned in federal court in Sacramento Wednesday morning. Gregory J. Chmielewski, 43, was indicted on 24 counts of mail fraud and money laundering in Feb. 2011, but the indictment was sealed until his Oct. [...]
So you think you’ve had contractor nightmares. I know I have. But I guarantee ours wither like flowers by the fire compared to what Linda Lipofsky’s been through. Lipofsky’s home saga involves an act of God, a nefarious contractor, a bankrupt insurance company and lost hope — all followed by absolute good. It’s a tale [...]
EDITOR: Judges and candidates for judicial office are required to abide by the Canons of Judicial Ethics. These rules promote and preserve judicial independence, fairness and competency. Canon 3 provides that “a judge shall perform the duties of judicial office impartially and diligently.” A subparagraph, Canon 3, Section B. sub.para (9) states, “A judge shall not [...]
EDITOR: I presented a longer form of this to the Board of Supervisors on Sept. 18. It was strongly supported by those there that day and Supervisor Ron Briggs asked for a copy of my speech, which I gave him. Please print the following: Great pains have been taken to consistently call this monstrosity a [...]
Near the close of a January committee meeting, a nuts-and-bolts sit down where El Dorado Hills Fire District policies are hammered out before going to the full board, Director Lou Barber turned to the lone member of the public in attendance. “Dick, do you have anything else to add?” “I’m good,” replied Dick Ross, who’d [...]
The Grace Foundation, an El Dorado Hills animal rescue non-profit, is seeking up to $20 million from the Bank of America and Wells Fargo Bank, Orange County attorney Tim Ryan, who represents the banks and the owner of a Susanville ranch in a lawsuit filed on July 6. In November, 2011, the Mountain Democrat reported [...]
An El Dorado Hills animal rescue foundation has accused two large banks and their attorney of orchestrating the fraudulent transfer of 36 horses, 14 of which were pregnant, from the squalid and now-infamous Whispering Pines Ranch in Susanville to the Grace Foundation in August, 2011, ignoring a bankruptcy filing that protected the horses as assets [...]
LESS IS MORE: The “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff” calendar offers the following sage advice: “Give up on the idea that “more is better.” It’s not that having a lot of things is bad, wrong, or harmful in and of itself, only that the desire to have more and more and more is insatiable. As [...]
An embezzler formerly of El Dorado Hills was sentenced to five years and 10 months in prison by U.S. District Judge Edward J. Garcia on Friday afternoon. Thomas Tanke, 68, will also face five years supervised release and will pay $243,403 in restitution, U.S. Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner announced in a press release. Tanke was [...]
THEY GROW UP QUICKLY: The “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff” calendar offers the following observation: “To remind yourself frequently what your children really want is not a strategy designed to make you feel guilty about how little time you have for your kids. The goal of this strategy is not about guilt, it’s about love. [...]
From a May 11 story in the Sacramento Bee about a fraud suspect arrested in Mexico by the FBI comes this item of interest about appointed Judge Warren Stracener of El Dorado County: “Warren Stracener, the sitting judge who is (Joseph) Hoffman’s other opponent, said he had been in communication with Kerekes and considered what [...]
A mailer sent out as part of El Dorado County Superior Court Judge Warren “Curt” Stracener’s reelection campaign has stirred controversy over opponent Joseph Hoffman. The mailer alleges that “Joseph Hoffman may have aided Daniel Chartraw in the commission of interstate fraud.” As previously reported in the Mountain Democrat, between Jan. 1, 2007, and Nov. [...]
Until a week before his first sentence modification hearing, Rick Betchley had been collecting volumes of data to prove his innocence. Testimonies, e-mails, IRS and FTB data and more comprised the stack of papers based on a case that started in 2006. It started when Betchley asked a social group he was part of to [...]