Orange County's Robert Andrew Paniagua is building an accomplishment-loaded resume that is unrelated to his carpet cleaner career.
In 2004, at the age of 19, Paniagua was convicted of DUI. Cops caught him driving under the influence again two years later. In 2007, he was convicted of lying to a cop. In 2011, he added grand theft, drug possession, receiving stolen property and public intoxication to the list of his achievements. Last year, he added even more drug possession and receiving stolen property convictions, and got nailed for burglary too.
If U.S. Department of Justice officials are right, he has now graduated to committing federal crimes.
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In recent weeks, Paniagua pleaded not guilty to a federal grand jury indictment that claims he produced at least 49 counterfeit $100 bills in a 2012 scam to dupe iPhone 5 sellers, according to court records.
He obtained a taxpayer-funded defense lawyer, pleaded not guilty and remains locked inside the Orange County Jail without bail.
U.S. District Court Judge Cormac J. Carney has scheduled a May 21 trial inside the Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse in Santa Ana.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.
