A 67-year-old Long Beach man has pleaded guilty to a home theft scheme in Orange County resulting in about $2 million in losses and faces two years in prison, according to court records obtained Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Andrew Stephan Hutchings pleaded guilty Monday to two counts of conspiracy, one count of grand theft, four counts of procuring or offering false or forged documents to be filed, and a count of identity theft, all felonies. Hutchings also admitted a sentencing enhancements for aggravated white collar crime exceeding $500,000.<\/p>\n
Co-defendant Raymond Jirak, 70, pleaded guilty July 27, 2023, to conspiracy, possession of a forged driver\u2019s license, and forgery. Jirak is scheduled to be sentenced July 31.<\/p>\n
The maximum sentence for Hutchings is 12 years and eight months, but he is expected to be sentenced to two years with two months of credits behind bars, according to court records.<\/p>\n
Hutchings, who previously had a real estate license, asked Jirak to \u201cimpersonate various individuals in front of a notary public in exchange for $500,\u201d prosecutors said in court papers.<\/p>\n
\u201cAdditional evidence bore out much of Mr. Jirak\u2019s statements that he was induced to participate in this conspiracy by defendant Hutchings and that defendant Hutchings was the criminal mastermind who benefited financially \u2014 to the tune of over $500,000 \u2014 from the fraud,\u201d prosecutors said in court papers.<\/p>\n
Hutchings impersonated a homeowner in October 2020 to sell at home at 1634 W. Orangewood Ave. in Anaheim. The victim\u2019s signature was forged on a purchase agreement to sell the residence, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
Hutchings used the profits to acquire gold eagle coins, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
The same conspiracy was attempted for a home at 20072 E. Frank Lane in Orange, according to the complaint.<\/p>\n
Four homes were stolen in the scheme, according to prosecutors. The home at 2843 W. Orange Ave. in Anaheim was estimated to be worth $415,000; a home at 1634 W. Orangewood Ave. in Anaheim was valued at $600,000; a home at 20072 E. Frank Lane in Orange was valued at $325,000; and a home at 11742 Della Ave. at Garden Grove was valued at $700,000, according to the criminal complaint.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 67-year-old Long Beach man has pleaded guilty to a home theft scheme in Orange County resulting in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,166,3130,4164,1073,171,4165,16274],"class_list":["post-390634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-county","tag-fraud","tag-guilty","tag-home","tag-orange","tag-pleads","tag-scheme"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390634","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=390634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}