Roommates Accused of Taking $285,000 Joyride on Stolen Check

Two roommates were charged Monday with stealing a check from a Newport Beach law firm, forging its value to more than $285,000 and using the loot to splurge on a luxury trip to New York, officials said.

Garden Grove residents Alexa Johzen Polar, 34, and Robin Antonella Pabello, 33, pleaded not guilty Monday to two felony counts of forgery, one felony count of grand theft, and one felony count of grand theft by embezzlement. Bail was set at $285,000 for each woman. If convicted, they face up to six years and four months in prison.

Farrah Emami, spokeswoman for the district attorney's office, said between Sept. 21 and Nov. 16, Polar and Pabello stole a $19,500 check made payable to the law firm where Polar was employed as a paralegal. They removed the payee’s name and the dollar amount, then substituted in Pabello’s name and changed the value to about $285,000.

On Nov. 16, the roommates allegedly deposited the doctored check into their joint bank account through an ATM and spent some of it to fly on a private jet with some friends to New York City, where they rented five rooms at a Times Square hotel and shopped at Tiffany & Co. and Montblanc.

A Facebook page that claims to be Pabello's depicts them standing next to a jet and gallivanting around the Big Apple.

Emami said Polar and Pabello are also accused of obtaining two cashier checks in the amounts of $100,000 and $33,000 from the fraudulently obtained funds to buy a $3.7 million, 11,000-square-foot house in Murietta.

The good times came to an end for the women when they were arrested Thursday, after the issuing bank rejected the check, Emami said. The pair will return to court Jan. 25 for a pretrial hearing.