Results tagged “money”

In her first audit since taking office as City Controller, Wendy Greuel this morning released findings about waste within the Los Angeles Convention Center. There's nothing catastrophic revealed in the audit, but it points out too many examples of lax oversight that cost taxpayers money.

Despite what many people think, the police are not always against medical marijuana dispensaries. A legal institution is a legal institution and when said institution happens to have lots of drugs and money inside their business, it's a prime target for robbery. Not many details are out now, but LAPD tomorrow will be asking the press and public's help "to inform the public about medical marijuana dispensary robberies and suspects who are to be considered armed and dangerous," an advisory says. "Police are also asking for the public’s help to identify and locate the suspects." Apparently, some incidents have happened in the West Valley.

Forget "Cash for Clunkers"--a 56-year-old man skipped the middlemen and gave his cash to commuters yesterday afternoon when he "tossed money from his car on Interstate 210 in the Los Angeles suburb of Glendora shortly before noon Sunday," according to Yahoo! News.

It probably wasn't very hard for former City Controller Laura Chick to leave her Los Angeles post early to join Schwarzenegger as his Inspector General overseeing how stimulus money was being spent in California. In Los Angeles, she was a bulldog over anything wasteful.

About 30 minutes after Charlie Samuel allegedly killed 17-year-old Lily Burk Friday, leaving her body in her car parked off a Skid Row street, he was detained by police a few blocks away for a Drinking in Public violation. As he was being searched by officers, narcotics paraphernalia was found and he was arrested and booked for Possession of Narcotics Paraphernalia.

Here's an interesting scam we heard via Jeff Berk of Watch2.org in Studio City. Last week, a resident of his neighborhood watch was on her way home from the grocery store and became the victim of an alleged car damage claim scam. From an e-mail to neighbors: [She] was returning home from Ralph's on Coldwater & Ventura when she was waved over to the side of the road at Dickens and Van Noord by 2 men in a car who claimed she had hit their car at Ralph's.

Annette Yeomans, a 51-year-old woman from the San Diego area, turned herself in at the jail in Vista yesterday. The former bookkeeper got herself booked, on charges related to the grand theft and embezzlement of $9.9 million from her former workplace, according to abc7.com.

First Angela Suleman said her daughter Nadya was "obsessed" with having kids and that she wouldn't be around to help her when her octuplets came home, then they seemed to have kissed and made up. But now TMZ is reporting that Mrs. Suleman hasn't been paying the mortgage during the months of her only daughter's most recent pregnancy. In fact, the gossip site explains: "According to documents filed earlier this month, OctoGrandma (who owns the house) hasn't made any payments on her home since May, 2008 -- she's behind $23,224.98."

It was bound to happen: Whittier's "Octo Mom" Nadya Suleman has her own website.

University of California students waiting for their Cal Grants to come through will find their next payments are coming from another source--the UC schools. The UC announced today they "will provide funding to cover the value of UC students' Cal Grant awards for the spring term," using "resources from its short-term financial reserves," according to a UC news release. They're advancing the funds "with the expectation that the California Student Aid Commission (CSAC) will disburse Cal Grant funds to campuses once the state adopts a final budget." Sadly, that budget remains in limbo; this month many programs and residents will be receiving IOU's instead of checks. The UC system also issued temporary funding to their students last fall when the budget caused delays in Cal Grant payments.

The Los Angeles Police Department are searching for a bank robber they've dubbed the "Salt & Pepper Bandit" (because of his hair). Authorities believe he is behind at least 12 bank robberies from a variety of local banking institutions that have taken place between January 5-22, and one today at just after noon at the Bank of America located at 11501 Santa Monica Boulevard.

RIght NOW on CNN (11a PST), you can check out a condensed version of the hit documentary I.O.U.S.A., about the growing national debt crisis that we all face. In these tough economic times, one way to stay on top is to stay informed, and I.O.U.S.A. is a great way to do just that.

Cue six degrees of Kevin Bacon game now... Three more victims of Bernard L. Madoff's Ponzi scheme were announced, including the Hollywood couple that is Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick. Madoff is accused of running a reportedly $50 billion Ponzi scheme in which investment money from new clients was taken to pay off earlier investors. Hollywood is no stranger to playing victim to Madoff--Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, business manager Gerald Breslauer and Eric Roth (screenwriter of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) are among those swindled.

Los Angeles' beleaguered Museum of Contemporary Art has been resuscitated by the generous purse-strings of a well-known benefactor. According to the LA Times, MOCA's board "has voted to accept a $30-million bailout offer from billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad, a founder and life trustee of the museum and the city's largest arts patron." This means that MOCA will not opt for a merger with LACMA and will instead to continue to operate independently. Broad has said that despite his philanthropic connection to LACMA, he feels there will be no damage to his relationship with them in light of his move to rescue MOCA.

'Tis the season for Top Ten lists, but this one--the 14th annual Kosmont-Rose Institute Cost of Doing Business Survey released by the Rose Institute of State & Local Government at Claremont McKenna College--gives our fair city more of dubious honor. Once again, Los Angeles ranks among the "10 most expensive places in the country to do business," reports the Daily News.

Is this a sign of the times? In most likely unrelated cases, two banks have been robbed by two elderly people estimated to be in their 60s or 70s.

The average price of a regular gallon of gas today is $2.491. Gas prices have declined for 59 days straight, falling an average of $1.25, according to the Daily News.

Electronics retailer Circuit City announced recently that they were going to close 155 stores nationally in efforts to curtail their financial woes. According to a November 3 press release, "the stores identified for closure are located in 55 U.S. media markets, of which Circuit City will exit 12 U.S. media markets." Although not exiting California, they are planning on closing 24 stores in the state, including ones locally in Industry, Compton, Foothill Ranch, Thousand Oaks, Riverside, North Fontana, Pomona, Santa Maria, and Santa Barbara.

If you bank at Security Pacific, your money's now with Pacific Western. Following Friday's shut down by the California Department of Financial Institutions, the four branches of the Los Angeles-based bank were taken over by the FDIC, who then "entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with Pacific Western Bank of Los Angeles to assume all deposits of Security Pacific, whose four branches will reopen on today as Pacific Western branches," according to MyFox Los Angeles. Customers are being assured that there has been no changes to their accounts, and their monies remain insured through the FDIC. Security Pacific is the 19th bank nationally and the 3rd in California to fail.

A proposal to tax home owners of properties larger than 5,000 square feet at least $1,000 annually will be discussed at a Los Angeles city council committee meeting today. If it makes it through the city process, two-thirds of voters would have to pass the tax (low and middle class vs. the rich?). "There are 6,336 single-family residences that exceed 5,000 square feet and 534 houses larger than 10,000 square feet. Taxing those residences would generate $15 million a year," reports the Daily News.

Jesus Sanchez at The Eastsider LA was curious who be the richest in the land of the hippest. Hypothesis: American Apparel's Dov Charney: "Last year, Charney, who sold off his company but remains in charge as CEO, earned a salary topping $8 million. In addition, the company granted him stock options worth nearly another $8 million. Of course, Charney, like everyone else with stock and a 401k, has taken a big hit. Still, the American Apparel stock he got when he sold the company is now worth, at least on paper, nearly $200 million, based on Thursday's closing stock price. That would buy enough $17, American Apparel pocket t-shirts for just about everyone living in Los Angeles and Orange counties."

Don't let your money go to waste, especially when not acting on it means the government gets to keep it. The Daily News has launched a nifty database of residents in LA County who are owed money by the IRS. Just plug in your name and city and voila, and you could be surprised.

Remember this above Obama buck from last week? The one that Chaffey Community Republican Women Federated of San Bernardino County used in a newsletter and with some members claiming that everyone eats those foods depicted, therefore, it is not racist.

Times are tough, which means saving a buck, or a penny, here and there is a high priority for lots of local shoppers. That means that a place like the 99 Cents Only store is a haven for penny pinchers and bargain hunters alike. But what happens when the economy can't keep a good thing going?

We've been following Proposition 8, which seeks to eliminate gay marriage on the November ballot, for some time now. The trend, as of late, has been that new issues and announcements come one at a time, maybe every other day. But more recently, the twists and turns in navigating the proposition has been more than a daily one.

It was hinted towards on Monday and yesterday it came true. Pacific Gas & Electric donated a quarter million dollars to the No on Prop 8 campaign, which seeks to defeat a proposed amendment change that would eliminate gay marriage in California. "The utility also said it will spearhead the formation of a business advisory council that will seek to get other businesses around California to to defeat the ballot initiative," reported the LA Times. The working theory behind businesses getting on the No on Prop 8 bandwagon is that if passed, the ban would be bad for business and many more gay employees are out and in higher ranking positions.

In a scathing review published today in the LA Times, restaurant critic Leslie Brenner takes on a seafood institution known mostly for it's foil animal-shaped doggie bags and it's Pacific Ocean views, and tries to figure out why Gladstone's in Malibu has earned the title of Southern California's top-grossing restaurant. At what is ostensibly a commercialized mini-chain offering very standard seafood fare (and, in the opinion of Brenner's server on one visit, even some sub-standard fare) you'll get "huge portions of bad food at astoundingly high prices." And while the customers seem to be happily conned, the establishment is laughing its way to the bank. But Brenner isn't laughing; she rates the place "poor" and gives the impression something is fishy with Gladstone's rampant popularity...and it isn't the clam chowder.

When it comes to the cost of a gallon of gas these days, it certainly doesn't seem to be the case that "it can't get any worse." We grumbled when it got to $3, winced when it hit $3.40, cringed when it hovered at the $4 mark, and now we're seeing prices in the $4.40 range at pumps all over SoCal. And, in true trend-setting fashion, our high gas prices have finally inspired the rest of the country to catch up; the national average is now over $4 a gallon.

One of the largest counterfeit currency rings in Southern California has been broken up after a three-month investigation leading federal agents to arrest five people. One of the caught suspects is a 35-year-old Sherman Oaks man, "who who allegedly cut the counterfeit bills and glued them together," according to the Daily News.