In Feb. 2012, an Irvine woman went to her gym, stored her belongings in a locker, worked out and returned to find everything valuable stolen.
Locker burglaries are common and almost always unsolved, but occasionally we get a glimpse of a jackass involved in this annoying crime.
Meet Jessica Janet Kuuipo Lau.
About a month after the gym burglary, an Orange County Sheriff's Department deputy working a heavy prostitution area 16 miles away in Stanton searched a motel room used by Lau and found the gym victim's property.
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In fact, Lau had signed the back of a recovered check made payable to the victim.
She admitted to deputies that she is a drug dealer and middle person in the trafficking of stolen property.
But that's not what landed her in most trouble.
Deputies also found in the room illegal supplies of Xanax, Vicodin, methamphetamine, plastic baggies, used pipes and scales.
In July 2012, a jury convicted Lau of being a drug dealer and fencing stolen property.
After her conviction, justices at the California Court of Appeal in Santa Ana asked Lau if she disputed the outcome of her trial. She recently did not bother to respond.
Upshot: The 44-year-old woman is serving a six-year sentence in the Orange County Jail.
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Email: rs**********@oc******.com. Twitter: @RScottMoxley.
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.