Real Results
Businessman Acquitted in Multimillion-Dollar Fraud Trial
by Contributing Editor
June 28, 2018
A Temecula businessman was acquitted Thursday of nearly two dozen felony charges stemming from what prosecutors contended was a money laundering scheme that involved obtaining hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans for medical equipment that was never acquired.
After deliberating Wednesday and briefly again Thursday morning, a Riverside jury found 53-year-old Sammy Ciling not guilty of 17 counts of money laundering and six counts of grand theft, as well as sentence-enhancing white collar crime allegations.
Ciling’s co-defendant, 52-year-old Dr. Donald Woo Lee of Newport Beach, is slated to be tried separately in October and is free on a $150,000 bond.
Riverside County Superior Court Judge Charles Koosed closed the case against Ciling and ordered the District Attorney’s Office to release the freeze on his assets after the verdicts were returned.
INDIO -- All charges have been dropped against the two men accused in the Pinyon Pines triple murders.
Robert Pape and Cristin Smith are being released from jail.
For years, the Pinyon Pines murders went unsolved.
Then this spring there were two arrests, but Friday there was a reversal as those suspects are set free.
Visible relief both inside and outside the courtroom from the families of Cristin Smith and Robert Pape.
Pape's attorney says the Riverside County District Attorney's office botched this case from the very start.
"They withheld exculpatory evidence, they essentially subverted the grand jury process by giving the grand jury a misleading and deceptive account of the evidence that they had," said Pape's attorney, Richard Blumenfeld.
On September 17th, 2006, the body of Becky Friedli was found burning in a wheelbarrow outside her home.
The house was on fire, and inside the bodies of her mother Vicki, and her mother's boyfriend, John Hayward.
Both had been shot.
"Their loss is unimaginable, and I don't in any way mean to diminish their loss, the tragedy of what happened to their loved ones, but these were not the right guys," said Blumenfeld.
The D.A.'s office said in a statement "it's committed to continuing its investigation into these murders and believes and expects that murder charges will be refiled in the near future."
It is unclear against whom.
The district attorney, Paul Zellerbach, was subpoenaed last month by Pape's attorney to testify at a hearing next week.
"The only reason they dismissed it, in my opinion, is because I was laying out what I certainly think is a prima facie case of obstruction of justice against Mr. Zellerbach and some of his deputies," said Blumenfeld.