Sheriff's: PTA Mom Ponzi Suspects Played the Victim to Investors

Sheriff's investigators said two PTA mothers at a Diamond Bar elementary school had pretended to be victims of that very scheme.

Capt. Mike Parker of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said that the two women arrested at their Diamond Bar homes Tuesday — 50-year-old Julianna Menefee and 41-year-old Maricela Barajas (aka Maricela Torres) — told investors they too were victims of a third suspect who had been arrested earlier for a similar ploy.

The suspected Diamond Bar-based scheme involving all three women ran from 2008-2010, investigators said, bringing over 40 investors into the fold to raise over $14 million on the promise of 100 percent returns based on an exclusive contract with Disney resorts to distribute AltaDena Dairy products.

The third suspect — 51-year-old Eva Perez — was convicted of operating a separate scheme in December of 2010 and is serving an 11-year sentence in a San Bernardino County prison on those charges, according to police reports.

Sheriff's investigators said most victims involved in this scheme found out "within a couple of weeks" that Perez had been arrested in late 2010 and began to ask questions that led to internal audits of the group.

In response to the news, Menefee and Barajas also told investors that they, too, were victims of the scheme that made up to $4 million disappear in expenses on lavish vacations, expensive cars, and hotels, investigators said.

One victim reported the suspected scheme to detectives at the sheriff's Walnut/Diamond Bar station, which began a six-month investigation leading up to Tuesday's arrests.

Parker said the three women had used PTA and school events to build trust and court potential investors into the alleged scheme, but that .

Investigators said they could not reveal the number of fellow PTA members that were victims of the scheme.

Pomona Unified School District's PTA Council President Laura Mundy said she was upset by the news that put the PTA in a bad light.

"It's very disappointing to have this point to the PTA as the issue when, in fact, it's not a PTA matter," Mundy said. "They just happened to be members of the PTA and we're into controversy."

According to school district records, Perez was president of the Neil Armstrong PTA for a six-month period during the 2009-2010 school year.

District officials said they had no prior knowledge of the investigation, the alleged scheme, or Perez's arrest.

The district also had no record of Barajas' involvement with the school's PTA. Records of Perez and Menefee's PTA involvement ended in the 2009-2010 school year, a timeline that does not overlap with Mundy's tenure as the PTA council president or the tenure of the school's principal, Cynthia Sanchez, who began at Armstrong in the 2010-2011 school year.

"I don't know any of these women," Mundy said.

The three women now face 22 felony counts, including grand theft and securities fraud, and are being held on $500,000 bail.

Arraignment for the three suspects was postponed at a hearing Wednesday afternoon, according to the L.A. County District Attorney's Office. The suspects will return to court on July 13 for a bail motion and their arraignment is scheduled for August 4 at the Pomona Superior Court.