Orange County Register , CA
April 14 2005

Hambarian defense lawyer denounces accusers

The former trash executive is charged with bilking the city of Orange
out of $4.3 million.

By JIT FONG CHIN
The Orange County Register

SANTA ANA – Jeffrey Hambarian negotiated good deals for the city of
Orange as a trash executive and was wrongly implicated in crime by
unreliable people and individuals with whom he had personally
clashed, his attorney told a jury today.

Mark Geragos, whose high-profile clients have included Winona Ryder,
Scott Peterson and Michael Jackson, portrayed Hambarian’s late
father, Sam, as an hardworker who built a trash empire on the values
of frugality and honesty.

Hambarian, 50, is so similar to his father, it was as though he
`falls out of your father’s nose,’ Geragos said, invoking an Armenian
saying during his opening statement.

Hambarian, arrested in 1998, is accused of bilking the city of Orange
of $4.3 million by underreporting revenue and inflating costs when he
was an executive in family-owned Orange Disposal Service and Orange
Resource Recovery Systems. He has pleaded not guilty to 57 charges,
including fraud, money laundering and commercial bribery.

After Geragos concluded, the 12 jurors and six alternatives started
watching 20 hours of taped testimony from Pat Augimeri, who said he
cashed checks for Hambarian at several stores owned by Augimeri’s
family.

`He was taking money from his company and putting it in his pocket,
as far as I could see. I didn’t ask much about it, but that’s what I
surmised,’ said Augimeri, who was 87 and sick with emphysema when the
testimony was recorded in 2000.

Hambarian’s trial will continue Monday and Tuesday, then pause until
April 18.