Earlier this month, George Jaramillo faced off against U.S. District Court Judge Andrew J. Guilford over the former Orange County assistant sheriff turned convicted felon's failure to pay $42,000 in fines.
Jaramillo, who has served both state and federal prison sentences for public corruption, insisted that he didn't have the resources to pay but expected he might have the funds next year months after his probation ended.
To bolster his sincerity, Jaramillo repeatedly interrupted his own criminal defense lawyer to talk directly to Guilford about all his good intentions.
But having detailed knowledge of Jaramillo's profound slyness, Guilford ordered an Aug. 27 hearing where he planned to allow Assistant United States Attorney Brett A. Sagel an opportunity to question the ex-cop's witnesses under oath.
]
If he found that Jaramillo had been trying to con him, a stern-faced
Guilford said there would be additional jail time as punishment.
No problem, Jaramillo replied.
But there was a huge problem. Sagel told Guilford that Orange County officials had given Jaramillo $476,000 in May for back pay.
Jaramillo admitted the payment but described an excuse that Joel Baruch,
one of his criminal defense lawyers, cashed the county's check and
wouldn't share any of it until they'd resolved their own dispute over
fees.
But today's hearing didn't happen. Jaramillo decided he had the money after all. On Aug. 20, he paid the $42,000 fine.
The
only remaining issue is whether Sagel can take Jaramillo's gold
sheriff's badge from trial evidence storage and give it to Sheriff Sandra Hutchens.
Jaramillo insists the badge was a personal gift from disgraced ex-Sheriff Mike Carona, who continues to serve his 66-month sentence at a federal prison in Colorado.
Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
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.