A Menlo Park man once convicted of trying to sell a fake stake in the Golden State Warriors has been sentenced to more than two years in prison after being found guilty of peddling phony Apple stock.Roger Steven Miller, 67, described by investigators as a veteran scam artist, pleaded no contest Thursday in San Mateo County Superior Court to grand theft and check fraud, both felonies. At the same hearing, Judge Lisa Novak sentenced him to two years and eight months in prison and ordered him to pay more than $19,000 in restitution.
Miller was charged in May after persuading two people in Menlo Park to buy 404 shares of Apple stock "that he of course never had," said Steve Wagstaffe, chief deputy district attorney.
Miller was "selling" the stock at $37 a share. At the time, real Apple stock was trading north of $200 a share.
The victims gave $15,000 to Miller for the stock initially, plus another $11,000 later, Wagstaffe said.
Miller required that he be paid in cashier's checks, authorities said. When the victims complained that they had not received their stock certificates, Miller wrote them a $26,000 check on a nonexistent Union Bank account.
Miller was already on probation for a 2007 check-fraud conviction in San Mateo County.
He was also convicted in federal court of mail fraud in 2002 and ordered to pay more than $200,000 in restitution in connection with a scheme to sell shares in the Golden State Warriors that he never had.
- Henry K. Lee
SAN FRANCISCO
Panhandler gets held this time
You may recall our story of the Financial District panhandler who ended up being jailed for a month after she called 911 to report an attack by a rival panhandler.Linsey Taylor told a police dispatcher that Al Pittman had struck her. After a second call, police showed up. By then, it was Taylor who was arrested on a probation violation when she readily told officers that she had been forced to stab Pittman with a box cutter to defend herself.
Pittman was not charged in the Oct. 24 incident, even though there were other witnesses who said he had been harassing people. Taylor however, got locked up for a month. She was recently freed by a judge, but still faces a possible revocation of her drug probation.
Now comes the unfortunate, if somewhat predictable, twist in the case. On Nov. 28, an SFPD officer en route home was harassed by Pittman when she stopped to buy a paper near Powell and Sutter streets.
Pittman allegedly tossed coffee on her. After the woman identified herself as an officer, Pittman allegedly punched her twice in the face, causing to hit her head and knocking her out cold.
The next night, the same time the story of Taylor's jailing hit the Internet, police found Pittman and arrested him.
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