A Newport Coast con artist who stole nearly $120,000 from small business owners so he could pay high-end rent in the gated, oceanview community and drive a Porsche Cayenne will learn how long he will be sent to prison on October 6.
If a prosecutor inside the U.S. Department of Justice in Santa Ana has his way, Daniel Peter Brucato–who pleaded guilty in January to six wire fraud counts named in a 2013 indictment–will serve at least 15 months in a federal penitentiary.
Between April and December 2011, Brucato took money for promised goods via the Internet, but didn't deliver.
He instead diverted the funds to enhance his lifestyle, according to a government report.
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Special agents with the United States Secret Service identified five victims across the country, but Assistant United States Attorney Vibhav Mittal decided to ask federal Judge David O. Carter to impose the low-end of sentencing guidelines on Brucato because he “readily” accepted responsibility for his crimes after his arrest.
Mittal is also asking Carter to order the defendant, who was born in 1959, to pay full restitution to his victims.
Brucato is presently free from custody on $20,000 bail.
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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.