Former Yucca Valley airport manager used embezzled funds to buy property
Prosecutors say a former Yucca Valley airport manager, who pleaded guilty to embezzlement charges, must cooperate with them about real estate purchases to get the full benefit of his plea bargain.
Richard Paul Demel, who once managed the High Desert airport, pleaded guilty to seven counts of theft in a $1.3 million embezzlement case Monday in Joshua Tree Superior Court.
Under the terms of his plea bargain, the 51-year-old Demel will spend four years in state prison, get fined $323,491 and be required to pay the missing money back as restitution when he is sentenced Dec. 4, according to the District Attorney's Office.
But before sentencing, Demel must cooperate with prosecutors to ensure there is marketable title on various properties he purchased with the money, explained Deputy District Attorney Lewis Cope, in a telephone conversation Monday.
"We have a lot work between now and the sentencing," Cope said. The prosecutor, who heads up the District Attorney's Public Integrity Unit, would not say how many properties are involved or where they are located.
There is some discrepancy, Cope said, about the maximum amount of prison time Demel would have faced if he had gone to trial and been convicted. Prosecutors have said that figure would have been about nine years.
Demel, of Bermuda Dunes and Yucca Valley, applied for a grant from the state Office of Emergency Services to fix damages at the airport caused by thunderstorms in August 2003, prosecutors said.
In 2004, a check for more than $1.1 million was issued to the Yucca Valley Airport District, but it was sent directly to Demel, investigators said. Demel opened an account without the knowledge of the district's board of directors and deposited the check, authorities said.
"Instead of the giving it to the airport, he put it into a bank account under his own name," Cope said.
The defendant, who was an unpaid volunteer, then made several transactions from the account between February 2005 through September 2006 for purchases of property and other items, authorities said.
The Yucca Valley Airport District, a special county district, operates the small airport used mostly by local pilots.
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