RANDY ECONOMY: MY WORLD: Maricela Barajas, Juliana Celeste Menefee: Diamond Bar Duo Pleads Today in Massive Ponzi Scheme

Monday, April 23, 2012

Maricela Barajas, Juliana Celeste Menefee: Diamond Bar Duo Pleads Today in Massive Ponzi Scheme

A very basic map of Los Angeles County in California (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

POMONA – Two Diamond Bar women charged with defrauding seven people out nearly $600,000 pleaded no contest today and were immediately sentenced to three years in county jail and ordered to repay the victims, the District Attorney’s office announced. Maricela Barajas, 42, whose true name is Maricela Torres, pleaded no contest to seven counts of securities fraud and was sentenced by Pomona Superior Court Judge Mike Camacho to three years in state prison, to be served in county jail, said Deputy District Attorney James Belna of the Major Fraud Division. Juliana Celeste Menefee, 51, also pleaded no contest to seven counts of securities fraud, but her case was heard in a different courtroom. She was sentenced by Pomona Superior Court Commissioner Wade Olson to three years in state prison, to be served in county jail. Belna said both women were ordered to pay a total of $590,000, or nearly $300,000 each, to the same seven victims whom they defrauded. Belna said Torres and Menefee, along with co-defendant Eva Perez, 52, told victims they were investing in a contract with the Alta Dena Dairy to sell milk exclusively to Disneyland. More than 30 people from throughout Los Angeles County invested between $2,000 to $100,000 with the three women and were promised extraordinary rates of return, Belna said. The three ran the large-scale Ponzi scheme between June 2008 to August 2010. Perez, who’s serving a 10-year state prison sentence after pleading guilty in San Bernardino County court in 2010 to the same scheme, pleaded no contest on April 19 to seven counts of securities fraud and one count of using a device to defraud. She was sentenced by Commissioner Olson to three years in state prison, to be served consecutively with her current prison sentence. Belna said Perez, the ringleader, was ordered to repay $1,037,225 in restitution.

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Meet Randy Economy

You may know me from my role as the Senior Advisor and Official Media Spokesman for the Recall Gavin Newsom campaign that established a worldwide blitz of interviews. I conducted more than 2,200 media interviews on behalf of “The People’s Recall” during a 10-month period from November 2020 to September 2021. The iconic magazine Mother Jones in a dramatic feature article called me “A ‘Superhero Pirate’ Radio Host, (and) Gavin Newsom’s Strangest—and Most Dangerous—Threat. Meet Randy Economy, the man behind the effort to recall California’s governor.” I appeared on more than 330 media outlets around the world in my capacity with RecallGavin2020. Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, Newsmax, NBC Nightly News, ABC News, as well as the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Politico, and dozens of other media outlets aired featured reports on my work on behalf of “The People’s Recall.” I am and will always consider myself to be a journalist. Sometimes I think I bleed ink. My talents as an Investigative Journalists in California earned me FIVE top awards from the prestigious Los Angeles Press Club in 2013, 2014, and 2016. I am tenacious. My reporting over the years has led to the prosecution of several elected officials in California. While working for a tiny community newspaper in Southeast Los Angeles County, I worked doggedly to expose the biggest public corruption case in Los Angeles County history when I unearthed a massive pay to play scheme inside the Assessor’s Office that led to the arrest of then Assessor John R. Noguez and four others. However, politics has been in my DNA since I was a child. I have worked on more than 300 political campaigns as a consultant and advisor since 1982 for candidates from all sides of the political spectrum including Democrats and Republicans, and even Libertarians. I am also a small business owner, serving as the President and CEO of Hot Water Studio & Production, LLC. My company works with media outlets across the state, nation, and world exposing public corruption via several new media platforms. I have also overcome personal challenges. I am legally blind with zero vision in my right eye and only 40 percent vision remaining in my left eye. I sometimes wear an eyepatch due to my failed vision. (Hence the nickname of “America’s Political Pirate.”