A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge today sentenced Garden Grove phenom-turned-Major League Baseball star Lenny Dykstra to three years in state prison for a scheme to steal or lease cars using someone else's paperwork.
Dkystra, known in his playing days for the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies as “Nails,” was immediately taken into custody on the orders of Judge Cynthia Ulfig.
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Through his attorney, Dykstra tried to withdraw a no-contest plea and fight the charges, but Ulfig would not allow it, saying he'd had plenty of chances to prove he, his accountant and another associate did not obtain a Lincoln, a Ford Flex and a Ford Mustang by claiming credit through a phony business and using an unsuspecting auto dealer as a co-signer.
Once lauded as a financial guru, Dykstra has been the subject of multiple lawsuits in recent years that have exposed him as a scam artist. He's also looking at numerous fraud counts in federal court, and separate criminal cases accusing him of drug possession (Dykstra now says he completed rehab) and showing his dick to maids who responded to craigslist housekeeping ads.
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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.