(March 9) The county of Riverside will provide animal shelter service for the city of Fontana pursuant to a February 24 decision of the Fontana City Council.
The Fontana City Council elected to contract with Riverside County for the service after the county of Riverside tendered a $679,932 annual bid, which was nearly $70,000 lower than the city of San Bernardino’s $747,947 overture.
The city of Fontana’s most recent agreement for animal sheltering services with the city of San Bernardino expired on June 30, 2014, and the city was operating under a month-to-month agreement for animal sheltering services. The city of San Bernardino increased costs for its services by an additional fifteen percent as of July 1, 2014. As a result, staff sought out sheltering services bids from the city of Rancho Cucamonga, the county of Riverside, and the city of San Bernardino. The city of Rancho Cucamonga was not able to offer services due to the limited size of its facility and number of animals the city of Fontana shelters on average. The city of San Bernardino provided a bid of $747,947 annually for sheltering services only.
On February 24, the city council voted 5-0 to discontinue using the city of San Bernardino for animal services, and enter into a contract with the county of Riverside, allowing Fontana to save nearly $70,000 annually. Mandatory microchipping of all dogs and cats was a component of the new contract. As part of the new agreement for animal shelter services with the county of Riverside, Fontana is paying the county of Riverside a service fee of $49,393 monthly for animal sheltering services. In addition, the city is paying a monthly shelter operational and maintenance fee of $4,485 and an additional $2,783 a month for the deployment of the mobile clinic. The total amount of the contract through June 30, 2018 is $2,266,422. The cost for all services will be billed monthly throughout the term of the agreement.
Beginning on Monday, March 9, the Fontana Police Department’s animal services division began using the Western Riverside County/City Animal Shelter as the drop off location for lost and found pets.
Animals are no longer being transported to San Bernardino. The shelter is located at 6851 Van Buren Boulevard (south of Limonite Avenue) in Jurupa Valley. The phone number is (951) 358-7387 and the website is www.rcdas.org. Shelter hours are Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and closed Sundays and holidays.
As part of its services, Riverside will provide 12 deployments of its mobile clinic, comprised of six spay and neuter clinics and six shot clinics for pets.

(March 12) Bill Dineen, who made his mark in the Inland Empire first as a banker and later as a commercial real estate broker, died peacefully at age 83 on February 25, 2015.
Born on May 15, 1931 in Torrington, Wyoming, Bill was raised on a farm in Scottsbluff, Nebraska with seven brothers and sisters. He graduated from Scottsbluff High School, and joined the Air Force in 1951, and was stationed in Alaska. He would later characterize his service in the Alaskan Territory as “the time of my life.”
Successful in the banking industry for several years, he worked at the First national Bank in Fontana and at Southwest Bank in Carlsbad. Subsequently he became a commercial real estate broker, a profession he flourished in for 30 years. He was also active in local politics.
His brothers Jack and Patrick were the progenitors of Dineen Trucking.
Dineen’s favorite rejoinder to things good and bad was “This is life… Life!”
He is missed by many friends and associates.
He is remembered by his sons; Mark (Roxanne) of Westville, Indiana: Greg of Wrightwood, Calif.: Jon (Mary) of Alta Loma, Calif; Bill Jr. of Oceanside, Calif; Jim (Jodi) of Spokane, Wash.; Tom of Oceanside, CA.; along with 15 grandchildren, and 4 great-grandchildren.
He is also remembered by sisters Maryanne Gable; Margaret (Roy) Phieffer; brother Patrick Dineen; sister-in-laws Virginia Dineen and Audrey Dineen; and brother-in-law Chuck Caringella.
Services will be held March 20, 2015, 10:45 am at Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside. Reception to follow at Jon and Mary Dineen’s home in Alta Loma. Friends and family are welcome to attend.
In lieu of flowers the family is asking that donations be made to Wounded Warriors or the Alzheimer’s Association.

(March 11) Soils Testing Southern California Edison was doing on Monday March 8 resulted in the perforation of a 16” water main in Chino Hills.
Edison had originally gained permission to put electrical lines for the Southern California Edison Tehachapi Renewable Transmission Project, which is to bring electricity generated at a wind farm in Kern County to the Los Angeles Basin, on 197-foot high towers. But in 2013, the California Energy Commission reversed itself, calling upon Edison to put the lines underground through Chino Hills and de-erect 18 of the towers the company had already put up.
The waterline, which runs in a north-south alignment at a depth of 8 feet and crosses the Tehachapi Renewable Transmission Project right of way, was damaged during geotechnical boring. The water supply to some residences and Boys Republic was completely cut off and water pressure to some nearby homes was reduced. By 1:00 a.m. Tuesday morning, however, water service to the area was restored.
The city of Chino Hills utilized public works crews to pump the water from a pit near the line break close to Cork Street.

VICTORVILLE—(March 10) Mark Lesley Hassel, the former Barstow Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics Academy principal who was arrested on January 16 and accused of having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl, has been charged with eight felony criminal charges.
Hassell came before Judge Raymond Haight for his arraignment on March 9 and pleaded not guilty to four counts of oral copulation with a minor, two charges of sodomy with a minor and two statutory rape charges. He is represented by attorney Jeffrey S. Bullard. He is being prosecuted by deputy district attorney Kathleen DiDonato.
Haight ordered Hassel to return to court on April 6 for a disposition hearing and to have no contact with the alleged victim, a student within the Barstow Unified School District, and no contact with any girl under the age of 18, except for his own children.

UPLAND—(March 13) Upland finance manager Christa Buhagiar has ended her tumultuous 22-month long tenure with the City of Gracious Living. Never truly comfortable in the position from the outset, her time with the city was rocky in no small measure because two of those serving over her had more financial management experience than she did. Over the last several months, her lack of imaginative approach to her assignment began to tell and when the opportunity for her to move on in the form of a job offer from the city of West Covina came her way, she submitted her resignation to city manager Rod Butler.
Buhagiar was hired as finance manager in June 2013 to relieve some of the burden on then-city manager Stephen Dunn. Dunn had been the city’s finance director since 2001 and remained in that post when he had been elevated to city manager in 2011. Dunn was struggling with dwindling revenues and a city staff that had excessive redundancy and was top heavy management-wise. Overly generous salaries that had been doled out to city employees under the regime of former Upland Mayor John Pomierski, who had been indicted on political corruption charges just after he resigned from office in 2011, had left the city in a tenuous position financially, and it was faced with overwhelming pension obligations in the future. It was widely believed that Pomierski had purchased the silence of many city employees about his depredations by providing them with fat salaries, generous benefits and cushy pensions. Two years before Buhagiar arrived, Dunn had taken a meat cleaver to city staff, laying off or firing 27 employees, including five department managers.
Dunn was encountering resistance from staff over his further intended economies, and his City Hall reform effort bogged down as this resistance manifested during the second half of his first year as city manager. In 2012, however, Dunn’s effort at reform was boosted with the election of Glenn Bozar to the city council. Bozar was employed as a manager with Tyco Electronics, where he oversaw a lean and efficient $16 billion private industry operation. As a council member, Bozar was intent on applying principles of management developed in the private sector to municipal operations, which coincided, in at least some of the particulars, with Dunn’s effort to make city operations more efficient through the winnowing of non-productive staff.
The intent with Buhagiar’s hiring was that she would understand the Dunn agenda and provide finance department reports and data to back up further layoffs at City Hall. It did not appear, however, that she understood what her intended role was, and as she assumed the position, became much too close to her fellow municipal employees. She was thus unable or unwilling to give Dunn and the city council the informational basis upon which to proceed with wholesale firings and layoffs.
It was painfully obvious to observers that both Dunn and Bozar had a greater command of the principles of financial management and a much more in-depth grasp of reorganizational strategy than did Buhagiar. As a member of the city council and its finance committee, Bozar continuously asked her to produce data she chronically did not have at her fingertips. Bozar continued to dwell on the need for the city to cure its looming pension crisis. On several occasions at public meetings when he did so, Buhagiar’s distaste for that assignment was visible through her body language, facial expressions and the rolling of her eyes.
Dunn’s inability to execute on his city reform package resulted in the fraying of his relationship with the council, including Bozar, and last year he was let go. There followed a wave of city officials taking their exodus, including city attorney Kimberly Hall Barlow, police chief Jeff Mendenhall, and assistant public works director Acquanetta Warren. Stephanie Mendenhall, the former police chief’s wife who is the city’s administrative services director, city clerk and director of human services, is set to retire in July.
While Buhagiar’s presence on city staff was tolerated by the balance of the council, she never embraced Bozar’s agenda for pension and payroll reform, leaving perpetually unresolved the resulting dissonance between a key finance committee member and the city staff person most closely involved with municipal finances. Ironically, Bozar alone supported Buhagiar when she sought in December to win support for a $1 million citywide finance reporting system, which the remainder of the council rejected.
A telling fact is Buhagiar’s relationship to Hall Barlow. Hall Barlow left the city under a cloud when she defied the city council’s instructions on the tenor of a letter to be written to the Colonies Partners land consortium over the lack of progress with regard to the development of former city property encumbered by a revisionary clause that was entrusted to the Colonies Partners to improve. Hall Barlow is the city attorney in West Covina, where Buhagiar has landed. This last consideration is widely perceived, both by members of the council and the public, as an indication that Buhagiar’s first loyalty was not to the City of Gracious Living. There were no statements of regret at the announcement of her leaving.
The Sentinel’s effort to reach Buhagiar was unsuccessful. Her last day with Upland will be on March 26 and she is to begin with West Covina on April 13.

By Count Friedrich von Olsen
Here are a few things I have picked up pertaining to some goings-on from around the largest county in the United States…
One close to home is that Lake Arrowhead Village was on the brink of being sold at a trustee sale that was scheduled for March 6. That was staved off, apparently, when the consortium that owns and operates the village, Roseville-based Pacific Capital Investments, managed to secure a new loan on the property. The loan was for enough, reportedly, to carry out some capital improvement projects which will, supposedly, transform it into a truly-world class resort, generating the income needed to keep this newest set of wolves that will be baying at the door in about 18 months from seizing the property. We shall see…
San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Deputy Jon Thorp did yeoman’s work in helping to reunite Art Traendley, who had served aboard the USS Wexford County LST-1168 during the Vietnam War, with one of his shipmates, Don Kowalski. Traendley, who lives in New Jersey, was trying to see how many of his roughly 150 fellow sailors on the Wexford County he could find for an upcoming 50-year reunion. His only lead was that Kowalski might be living in Yucaipa. He sent a letter to the sheriff’s department, which serves as the police department in Yucaipa and inquired to see if he could be put in contact with Kowalski. Thorp somehow ended up with the letter and cut through the red tape that disallows the sheriff’s office to get involved in personal information requests. The deputy took it upon himself to get in touch with Kowalski, who owns the Yucaipa Lawn Mower Shop, and let him know Traendley was seeking him out. He passed along Traendley’s contact number and the shipmates of a half century ago have been reunited…
The McDonald’s Operators’ Association of Southern California, you know, the collective of McDonald’s restaurant franchise owners, has stepped up and provided $1 million to enlarge the Loma Linda Ronald McDonald House. The Ronald McDonald House for almost 20 years now has been a great place where families whose seriously ill children are being treated at Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital can spend the night so they can be together during such unspeakably difficult times. The expansion will more than double the number of rooms available to families from 21 to 54; increase the size of the kitchen and dining areas; and expand the common areas, such as the playroom and business office. The house is conveniently located near the children’s hospital. It serves more than 1,000 families each year. This is a wonderful thing and really shows the world the good side of San Bernardino County, the community of Loma Linda and McDonald’s. Now, if McDonald’s could just figure out what they did to change their Quarter Pounders several years ago and change it back. Maybe it’s just me, but they just don’t taste as good as they used to…
All the way up here in my mountain redoubt word has reached me that things this week took a turn toward the uncivil in the City of Gracious Living. The Upland City Council on Monday had to choose whether to put an initiative relating to making medical marijuana available for sale there on the ballot this year or next. The initiative’s proponents want it voted on this year. The city attorney had given the council the option of doing it this year or next. Before the decision was even made, one of the proponents, I am told, chose to insult the council by inviting its members to have sexual relations with themselves or something similar. Another initiative proponent threatened to recall the council members from office. It’s been several decades, at least, since I read Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends And Influence People. Despite the elapsing of that much time and the senility that is, alas, creeping over me, I can still say with absolute confidence that insulting people who have the power of decision over you or an issue dear to your heart was not a tactic that Mr. Carnegie recommended. I am still trying to figure out exactly what the pair that came before the council on Monday night had hoped to accomplish. I don’t think it worked, since the city council in the end decided to hold off on the election until next year. My governess taught me when I was a child that I should not make decisions or blurt things out when I am angry. Overall, I think that was a pretty sound lesson. Those involved in public affairs in Upland should heed it…

ADELANTO— (March 10) Clean Focus, Inc.’s 3.75 megawatt Adelanto solar plant began operations last week.
Located at 9001 Cassia Road, the facility was given its note of occupancy on March 3. The plant, which was built by Sol Construction, of Riverside according to a design developed by the engineering firm MPE Consulting, covers 20 acres.
Clean Focus CEO Stanley Chin asserted that the plant will offset carbon dioxide 4,934 tons annually.
Chin and Clean Focus were the object of derision by the project’s detractors who said that assertions that the project would create hundreds of jobs was belied by the consideration that the facility employs a total of one-and-one half employees.
Chin downplayed the criticisms, saying that the property upon which the solar facility is located would have otherwise lain “underutilized.”
The construction of the facility, which was financed by Seminole Financial Services, entailed scores of workers, whose temporary employment on the project ended when the ground-mounted system was interconnected in late January.
Under the California Renewable Energy Small Tariff Program, the solar plant markets electricity to Southern California Edison.

EL MIRAGE—(March 10) A 1.16 megawatt expandable solar project being built by the Phelan Pinon Hills Community Service District will save the district $13.9 million in electricity costs over the next 30 years, district officials say.
The facility is being constructed on the former Meadowbrook Dairy in the 17900 block of Sheep Creek Road in El Mirage. Upon its June completion, the plant will supply 40 percent of the electricity used by the district. The lion’s share of the district’s power use is to run pumps for wells and booster stations that provide and deliver water to 6,800 homes.
SunPower Corporation is building the facility.
In fiscal year 2013-14 ending last June 30, the district laid out $821,431 in payments to Southern California Edison. That expense represented 17 percent of the community service district’s water operations budget, according to the district.
The $13.9 million in savings over the expected life of the solar plant will more than offset the $4.7 million the plant will cost to complete and the loan financing needed to undertake it. The district received major subsidizations on the project, using Southern California Edison’s local-government Renewable Energy Self-Generation Bill Credit Transfer program.

By Mark Gutglueck
Though it today is but a shadow of itself in its heyday, the Cucamonga Wine Region was once the most prolific wine producing area in the United States. It garnered for the Inland Empire a reputation that for many decades defined this portion of Southern California, with its Mediterranean climate, as a West Coast/California paradise.
In 1838, the first vineyard was planted in the Cucamonga Valley, which would later become known to vintners and others alike as the Cucamonga-Guasti Wine District. Tiburcio Tapia, an adventurer, soldier, privateer, smuggler and politician, planted the first large vineyard in present day Rancho Cucamonga, one year before he was granted 13,000 acres of land around the area called Cucamonga by Governor Juan Bautista Alvarado on March 3, 1839. Using indigenous labor, Tapia planted rows of grapes and built a successful winery, which lay east of his adobe home on Red Hill. A portion of the winery, later known as the Thomas Brothers Winery – “California’s Oldest” yet stands at the northeast corner of Carnelian Avenue and Foothill Boulevard.
With its cool foothill terraces, natural springs, its warm sandy floor and perfect drainage, the Cucamonga Valley had the ideal growing conditions for grapes of all types, from Old World varieties of Mediterranean, French and German grapes to those that fared well on the East Coast of the United States.
1859 would prove a fateful and auspicious year for winemaking in the Cucamonga Valley.
In 1859, John Rains started planting the second large vineyard in the area, eventually establishing 125,000 vines.
The Sainsevain brothers – Pierre and Jean Louis, arrived less than a decade later and they established a formidable vineyard in eastern Etiwanda, near the present day border between Rancho Cucamonga and Fontana.
Jean Louis became winery superintendent at the winery built by Tapia. Pierre, arranging for the importation of grape cuttings from France, planted a number of new varieties in the area. In 1869 the San Francisco Times rhapsodized, “A very superior article of wine grown in San Bernardino County is now on the market and is attracting considerable attention … from consumers of the juices of the grape.” In singing the merits of the Sansevain wines, the San Francisco Times said, “It is known as Cocomun- go, or California Madeira wine, and is pronounced by competent judges to be as fine an article as manufactured in the world.”
In the area around Etiwanda, table grape growers flourished, including George F. Johnston, who was instrumental in establishing the commercial viability of the Thompson Seedless grape developed by his partner, William Thompson.
The magnificent scenery of the Cucamonga Valley played a role in its evolution into a wine kingdom. The views the valley offered were said to be majestically reminiscent of Italy’s Piedmont region. Word of mouth and word of letter spread back to the Old Country and in no time men and women left Italy behind, emigrating to towns with names like Cucamonga, Etiwanda, Fontana, Grapeland, Mira Loma, Wineville, and another, later named after one such early immigrant, the village of Guasti.
The second reason for the significance of 1859 was that year Secondo Guasti was born. Guasti was to become the most prolific vintner in the region. In 1883 he founded the Italian Vineyard Company, transforming it into a formidable wine enterprise that was still growing when it was curtailed by the Volstead Act, which initiated Prohibition in 1919.
Guasti later said that when he first beheld the desertlike sands at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains/Angeles National Forest being overwashed by the torrent of spring time water coming out of the mountains, “Surely, I thought, this is heaven’s doorstep.” He knew there would be enough moisture to sustain the vines and he went no further than the crest of the Cucamonga Valley.
In 1917, Guasti was advertising the Italian Vineyard Company’s vineyards on 5,000 acres as the largest single vineyard in the world.
In 1882, the Hofer Family established the Cucamonga Pioneer Vineyard Winery, east of what is now Haven Avenue. The Hofer Family, in addition to cultivating their own vineyards, established an association of 11 other growers whose vineyards eventually grew to encompass 4,000 acres.
In the early 1900s, the U.S. Government and the state of California, perceiving the value of the tremendous asset that had already been established in the Cucamonga Valley, offered incentives in the form of grants, loans and tax breaks to European Vintners willing to relocate to California and establish wineries.
Philo Biane established the Vaché/Biane family operation in Cucamonga, including the Brookside Winery. The Gallo Brothers established a winery in the Cucamonga Valley as well.
By 1916, there were more than 20,000 acres of vineyards in the Cucamonga Valley, well beyond those in Sonoma and Napa counties.
The Volstead Act and the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920 forbade the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors.” It remained legal, however, to make 200 gallons of wine in each home.
Red grapes, including Zinfandel and Grenache fared well in the soil and climate of the Cucamonga Valley. When prohibition became the law of the land and large quantities of wine grapes were transported by train to the Midwest and East Coast for use by home winemakers, the Zinfandels, with their thick skin and high sugar content became much in demand.
When prohibition ended in 1933, Vintners in the Cucamonga Valley immediately parlayed the area’s reputation for high quality Zinfandel grapes into a marketable product, and the wine label, “Pride of Cucamonga” was born. It fared well in the eastern markets such as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland, Boston and Atlantic City.
That was perhaps the only positive impact of Prohibition on the Cucamonga Valley Wine Industry. On balance, the 14-year experiment of Prohibition had a devastating impact on what had here-to-for grown into a world class agricultural setting. Those vintners that had survived (Guasti died in 1927), gamely carried on, working to re-establish what had been taken away. The Accomazzo, Aggazzotti, Campanella, Cherpin, DiCarlo, Ellena, Filippi, Galleano, Guidera, Liabeuf, Masi, Opici and Romolo families, some of whom had been in operation prior to and even during Prohibition, redoubled their efforts beginning in 1933/34.
In 1939, six years after Prohibition had ended, the Cucamonga-Guasti area boasted 41 thriving and bonded wineries and 13 brandy distilleries. The region had a storage and fermentation capacity of more than 13 million gallons of wine.
Six years later, wine production in the valley had grown, with 55 wineries operating and approximately 35,000 acres of vineyards being farmed. The Belletrutti, Bruno, Carrari, Cherbak, DeAmbrogio, DeBerard, DeVito, Ellena, Johnston, Lopez, Mandala, Merrille, Modica, Sanchez and Vernola families were active in the winemaking business.
By the late 1950s and early 1960s, much of the emphasis in California wines was on massive production of sweeter fortified port-style and hearty red wines sold in gallon jugs. The Cucamonga Valley participated in this trend. In 1968, the Cucamonga Valley accounted for 98 percent of the 9.5 million gallons of wine produced in the Southern California. At that point the Cucamonga Valley was riding the crest of the domestic sparkling wine production boom.
But with the 1970s, two trends were ushered in that resulted in the decline of the Cucamonga Wine Region. American wine consumers’ tastes matured, resulting in sweet wines falling out of favor. Northern California wines, particularly those bottled in Sonoma and Napa enjoyed a renaissance. This eroded the Cucamonga Wine District’s hold on the market. Pressure on vineyard owners to plant varieties more in demand hit just as ever-increasing land values resulted in pressure on the vintners to sell their property at great profit. Many did, and many more of those that held out capitulated later as land values rose to astronomical levels. The once-storied Cucamonga Valley has lost most of its once vast vineyard acreage to development and the urban expansion. Today, only four of the area’s traditional wine-growing families, Biane, Filippi, Galleano and Hofer remain in the winemaking business.

(March 12) The San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office has filed charges against attorney Stephen Siringoringo and two of his associates in connection with what has been described as a “major loan modification fraud scheme.” He has been arrested and is being held in lieu of bail of more than $17 million.
The complaint alleges 23 felony counts of grand theft of personal property and taking upfront fees for loan modifications in addition to 24 counts of money laundering.
The activity by Siringoringo, Joshua Cobb and Alfred Clausen, according to the district attorney’s office, “resulted in the loss of over 44 million dollars by unsuspecting victims.
On March 5, investigators from the real estate fraud prosecution unit of the San Bernardino District Attorney’s Office arrested Stephen Lyster Siringoringo, 34, of Westminster, and 32-year-old Joshua Michael Cobb.
Both suspects allegedly took large sums of money from victims who were seeking loan modifications. A third suspect, Alfred Orn Clausen, 41, of Rancho Cucamonga, is still at large and is suspected of leaving the country.
According to district attorney office investigators, the vehicle for the criminal activity was the Siringoringo Law Firm, which had engaged in energetic advertisement on local radio and television. The law firm advertised extensively in Spanish language media.
Siringoringo, a 1999 Fontana High School graduate, seemingly made good by becoming an attorney specializing in modification services for clients facing foreclosures during the height of the home mortgage meltdown five years ago. But despite representing that he was a top flight attorney, Siringoringo rarely, if ever, delivered.
He and his firm took money up front from clients, maintaining action could not be taken if there were no funds to work with. The firm typically asked for $3,995 to initiate work and would bill clients $135 each month thereafter. When employees were pressed by clients about what action had been taken, they would be met with claims that the process required time to mature. Delays of eight, ten, 12, 14 and 16 months before informing clients that their loan modifications had been denied were common. Subsequently, clients were told that another method for obtaining a modification was in the works. Few, if any, of the sought modifications were ever achieved.
Victims were promised that their loan modifications would be handled by a licensed attorney. Instead, they were handed off to a non-attorney representatives. Many of the victims never met or spoke with Siringoringo.
In December 2013, the California Bar Association found Siringoringo culpable of collecting advanced fees for loan modification work in 20 client matters and recommended an 18-month suspension. In partial mitigation Siringoringo agreed to provide refunds ranging from $1,500 to $5,970 to 14 former clients named in the stipulation. On October 15, 2014 Siringoringo and the State Bar agreed to a stipulation which ratcheted that December 2013 discipline up to the level of disbarment.
Losing his license to practice law mollified some, though not all of the hundreds of former clients who claim Siringoringo took advantage of them, took their money, allowed their homes to be taken from them and then provided them with no accounting or records to assist them in the aftermath.
According to the State Bar, Siringoringo visited upon his clients significant harm by failing to provide promised services to them and aided in the unauthorized practice of law by others when he allowed non-attorney employees to meet with clients, set fees and perform legal services without supervision.
The State Bar’s Office of Chief Trial Counsel indicated it has received 796 additional complaints regarding alleged misconduct by Siringoringo. Those clients may be eligible for reimbursement by the State Bar’s Client Security Fund.
In San Bernardino County, Siringoringo and Cobb are scheduled for a pre-preliminary conference March 13, 2015. Deputy district attorney Vance Welch is prosecuting the case.
If convicted as charged, the defendants face in excess of thirty years in state prison.
Bail is currently set at $17,837,000 each for Siringoringo and Cobb.