Former Santa Ana city intern and budding Coen Brother Miguel Ruiz Fabian was sentenced today to six months in jail and three years probation for secretly videotaping men using City Hall restrooms.
The 24-year-old Santa Anan pleaded guilty to eight misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct by unlawful viewing in the creation of 64 videotapes from his cell phone camera.
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Copping to the moviemaking was a smart move considering that a drawn-out case ending in a conviction might have spurred the judge to impose a maximum sentence of 11 years and six months behind bars.
Fabian was undone on May 31, 2011, when a guy doing his business in the city john looked down to see a cell phone looking back up at him. He quickly identified it as belonging to Fabian, who was then a Cal Poly Pomona engineering student serving an internship in Santa Ana's Public Works Department. The unwitting actor then dialed 9-1-1, one prays after washing his hands.
Police later identified 64 occasions over 23 separate days that Fabian had the camera rolling in stalls dating back to Dec. 28, 2010. All victims who could be identified from the images were contacted by Santa Ana cops, although some remain unknown.
It will be interesting to see if Fabian chooses cell No. 1 or holds out for No. 2.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.