Former T.O. resident and deputy district attorney sentenced for fraud

Julie Marie Sergojan, 50, a Thousand Oaks resident and former Los Angeles County deputy district attorney, was sentenced to 10 years in state prison on Jan. 23 following her guilty pleas to nine felony charges from three separate fraud schemes. She pleaded guilty to charges of identity theft, grand theft, loan fraud, forgery and passing bad checks.

Sergojan worked as a district attorney for 19 years. She was convicted of four felony charges in a Los Angeles case in 2003. Those charges came from an identity theft scam she ran while working as a prosecutor. She repaid more than $40,000 in criminal restitution, which persuaded the judge to grant her probation and no jail time.

Sergojan collected the money for restitution by committing a new fraud scheme between June and October 2003. Posing as her estranged husband, Sergojan fraudulently gained a $200,000 loan from a private lender. The loan transaction was conducted remotely by Internet, e-mail, fax and mail. Sergojan defaulted on the loan and has been ordered to pay more than $184,000 to a title insurance company that indemnified the lender for the loss.

Sergojan had previously conducted a separate mortgage loan fraud in 2002. She purchased a $447,500 mortgage for a Westlake home in August 2002 by submitting a series of forged and fraudulent documents to the lender that misrepresented her income, assets and credit standing.

She lost the Westlake home to foreclosure in 2005 but not before committing a third scam to avoid an earlier foreclosure sale. In June 2003, Sergojan tricked her bank into clearing funds for two checks she deposited so that her delinquent mortgage payment check would be honored. The two checks she deposited were homemade forgeries drawn on nonexisting accounts. Her bank cleared those funds, the mortgage payment check was honored and a pending foreclosure canceled.

Segojan has been in custody in Ventura County Jail since Nov. 9, 2006, with bail set at $2 million. She had previously been free on bond, but the court revoked that bail and remanded Sergojan after she was caught on videotape trying to break into her husband's residence in direct violation of an earlier court order.