{"id":366263,"date":"2026-06-18T21:35:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T21:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/366263\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T21:35:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T21:35:14","slug":"scandalous-past-of-california-comedian-carlos-mencia-as-the-da-comes-crushing-down-on-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/366263\/","title":{"rendered":"Scandalous past of California comedian Carlos Mencia — as the DA comes crushing down on him"},"content":{"rendered":"

A famous comedian facing the weight of Los Angeles prosecutors<\/a> has a past that is no laughing matter.<\/p>\n

Carlos Mencia of \u201cMind of Mencia\u201d fame has a troubled history, including within his career as a jokester.<\/p>\n

Fellow comedians like George Lopez, Ari Shaffir, and Bobby Lee accused him of pilfering jokes from them over the course of his career.<\/p>\n

The scandal reached a fever pitch when Joe Rogan hopped on stage in the middle of Mencia\u2019s set at the Comedy Store in February 2007 to accuse him of being a joke thief.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf someone steals a riff from a song, that sh*t\u2019s in the news constantly,\u201d he said. \u201cMotherf***er steals sh*t and makes it on HBO. They steal sh*t, and they put it on television.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cIf someone steals a riff from a song, that sh*t\u2019s in the news constantly,\u201d he said. \u201cMotherf***er steals sh*t and makes it on HBO. They steal sh*t, and they put it on television.\u201d Youtube\/Abba Zabba<\/p>\n

One joke Mencia was accused of stealing was a Shaffir bit where he joked about how then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted to build a wall between California and Mexico. Shaffir asked the governor who he thinks is going to build the wall.<\/p>\n

Mencia had a very similar joke, with the same punchline, asking who was going to build the wall. <\/p>\n

He\u2019s maintained that he\u2019s done nothing wrong.<\/p>\n

South Park even parodied the scandal, showing Mencia take credit for a joke that wasn\u2019t his on a fictional Conan O\u2019Brien television spot.<\/p>\n

Mencia also faced financial issues in recent years. <\/p>\n

The Internal Revenue Service put liens<\/a> on several properties Mencia owned in Douglas County in Oregon for several years of unpaid federal income taxes totaling about $1.2 million.<\/p>\n

One of the properties was a 7,189 square-foot home with eight bedrooms and seven baths valued at $1.5 million.<\/p>\n

Mencia purchased a home in Encino, California, in 2008 for close to its asking price of $4.4 million. The property, a walled and gated Mediterranean-style home, has six bedrooms and eight bathrooms across 8,500 square feet. He even had a garage large enough to fit six cars.<\/p>\n

The comedian admitted to committing devious crimes in his teen years. WireImage<\/p>\n

\u201cSomebody owed me money, so this is how stupid I was. I called him up, and I said, \u2018I\u2019m coming to your house. If you don\u2019t have my money you better not be there.\u2019 And when I got there the person wasn\u2019t there,\u201d he said. Getty Images<\/p>\n

The comedian admitted to committing devious crimes in his teen years. In a 2006 NPR interview<\/a>, he said he was a drug dealer when he was 19 and robbed someone\u2019s house after they didn\u2019t pay him the money they owed.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomebody owed me money, so this is how stupid I was. I called him up, and I said, \u2018I\u2019m coming to your house. If you don\u2019t have my money you better not be there.\u2019 And when I got there the person wasn\u2019t there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI broke into their house, took video equipment, all kinds of stuff, so that I could sell it to make my money back. And on the way home I realized, what did I just break into somebody\u2019s house? My God! What is wrong with me?\u201d<\/p>\n

Los Angeles DA Nathan Hochman is set to reveal criminal charges against Mencia in a Thursday press conference.<\/p>\n

The California Post reached out to reps for Rogan, Shaffir, Lopez and Lee for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A famous comedian facing the weight of Los Angeles prosecutors has a past that is no laughing matter.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,34498,723,47,4182,3586],"class_list":["post-366263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-comedians","tag-crime","tag-los-angeles","tag-metro","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}