Do the Crime, Pay the Time – A Sad Story about a corrupt councilman in our City of Glendale.

This is a story of a councilman from our city who embezzled money and cheated his community that had elected him.  It is a dark day in a corrupt politician career.  What a shame.

By Brittany Levine, brittany.levine@latimes.com

March 12, 2014 | 9:51 a.m

Former Councilman John Drayman pleaded guilty to three felonies Wednesday morning, including embezzlement, and agreed to a sentence of one year in jail as well as paying about $305,000 in restitution.

During the brief hearing in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom, he also agreed to pay about $14,000 in restitution to the state of California Franchise Tax Board. One of the felony counts was filing false tax returns as a result of his theft from a weekly farmers market run by the Montrose Shopping Park Assn. The third was perjury.

Drayman has a few weeks before his sentencing. He is scheduled to return to Los Angeles Superior Court on April 7 and is set to spend his time behind bars in Los Angeles County Jail. He will also serve five years probation.

This was Drayman’s third shot at a plea deal.

In September, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Stephen Marcus rejected his proposition that included 300 hours of community service and restitution, but no time behind bars. At the time, Marcus said he could not accept that plea deal because it would be a “slap on the wrist” for someone who held a position of trust as a mayor and council member when he was committing his alleged crimes.

On Monday, Drayman proposed spending 90 days in county jail in exchange for pleading guilty, but Marcus vetoed that, too, noting that if Drayman accepted spending a year in jail, he would reluctantly agree to such a deal.

Marcus has said during court room appearances that if Drayman went to trial and lost, he would be given a prison sentence.

Wearing a gray suit and tie, Drayman calmly waived his rights to a jury trial, which was scheduled to take place in April. The jury trial would have begun about two years after he was indicted by the grand jury on 28 counts, including forgery and money laundering.

Authorities claimed that he embezzled at least $304,000 from the shopping park association between 2004 and 2011 while he helped the group collect money from vendors at the Sunday Harvest Market along Honolulu Avenue. Drayman’s guilty plea did not include an exact figure of how much he admitting to stealing.

At one point Drayman, who served on the council from 2007 to 2011 and held the position of mayor between April 2008 and April 2009, did not turn over market fees for nearly a year. Meanwhile, the Montrose Shopping Park Assn. experienced budget woes, and the group struggled to stay afloat. Since Drayman has been out of the picture, the association’s revenues have skyrocketed.

Drayman declined to comment after pleading guilty. Deputy District Atty. Susan Schwartz said that she would wait to make a statement until after the sentencing.

Breaking News... Former Glendale City Councilman indicted on embezzlement charges.

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My last post on my blog was a little introduction about my hometown Glendale.  Today, unfortunately I have to write about a former Glendale councilman being indicted on embezzlement charges.

It was not long ago, that an elected official was convicted of corruption.  It was December 7, 2011, when former governor of Illinois, Mr Blagojevich, was sentenced to 14 years in federal prison. The Jury found him guilty of trying to sell or trade President Obama's old Senate seat.  

Although the indictment of our former councilman is not as huge as Blagojevich, however it is so shameful.  I'm sorry to see another corrupt elected official this time so close to home. Here is the news taken from our local newspaper the Glendale News-Press. 

Former Councilman John Drayman was indicted Tuesday on charges that he embezzled at least $304,000 from the weekly farmers market in Montrose.

Drayman, who was arraigned on the felony charges at a downtown Los Angeles courtroom, pleaded not guilty. He is accused of: one count of embezzlement, 10 counts of filing false tax returns, five counts of money laundering, three counts of forgery, one count filing a false financial statement and eight counts of perjury by declaration.

Los Angeles County Deputy District Atty. Susan Schwartz said in court that the evidence shows Drayman deposited funds he collected from the Montrose Harvest Market into his own bank accounts, and the extent of embezzlement may have reached $880,000.

She also alleged that Drayman was uncooperative with authorities during the course of the investigation.

“He has consistently lied to them,” Schwartz said.

Drayman — who faces 10 years in prison if convicted — was silent and reserved during much of the hearing.

His attorney, Michael Kraut, rebuffed Schwartz’ characterization in court.

“Mr. Drayman has been cooperating with this investigation,” said Kraut, who specializes in representing executives accused of white-collar crimes.

The indictment caps a year-long Glendale police investigation into allegations of embezzlement brought by the Montrose Shopping Park Assn., which operates the Harvest Market every Sunday.

The event had been logging steady losses as early as 2011, when organizers estimated they would lose $52,000 on the venture.

In the years since he helped create the Harvest Market in 2002, Drayman maintained an active role in the market, even after his election to the City Council in 2007.

But amid steep revenue losses, the association’s board of directors created a “Harvest Market Oversight Committee” in April 2011 and instituted a new procedure for collecting and recording weekly cash payments from vendors. Around the same time, Drayman was removed from his role in helping with the event for which some vendors said he collected cash payments.

According to the indictment, four board members discovered Drayman was submitting far less to the shopping park than what was being collected from vendors at the market.

A month later, news of the embezzlement investigation broke.

A few months after that, the association started reporting a massive market revenue spike — a turnaround Executive Director Dale Dawson called a “wonderful mystery.”

By December of that year, the Montrose Shopping Park Assn. was forecasting an income on the market of roughly $130,000 for 2012 — or nearly half the group’s operating budget.

Schwartz said the shopping park saw a 300% jump in revenues after Drayman was removed from the board.

Drayman was taken into custody in court after Superior Court Judge Patricia Schnegg ruled that Glendale police would have to investigate the source of the money put up for his bail, which was set at $200,000.

She declined Kraut’s request to allow Drayman to remain free until the terms of his bail were settled.

“I believe all defendants should be treated equally,” Schnegg said. “I treat everybody the same.”

He is scheduled to appear in court today for the bail hearing. Longtime Drayman supporters Sharon and Robert Thompson and Sharon and Bill Weisman had offered to put up funds to post bail using lines of equity and property. Schwartz raised concerns over the funding, which she said came in the form of an Internet printout and an “old grant deed.”

Schnegg also said she would only grant bail so long as Drayman wasn’t involved in any flea and farmers markets that were run by his “life partner,” Jeff Decker.

Decker recently started a new market for antiques and collectibles in La Crescenta, but Drayman’s attorney assured the judge that the former councilman was not involved.