David Gardner

David Larry Gardner, 67, of Ojai, pleaded guilty in Ventura County Superior Court to 23 felonies for trying to have three people murdered, burning down a local business, committing multiple counts of grand theft and forgery and writing letters for the purpose of extortion according to an article appearing in the Ventura County Star on September 17, 2008.

Gardner was also convicted in May of this year of six felony counts of illegally possessing firearms and ammunition in 2004 and 2005. He will be sentenced to 33 years in prison on December 16 for both the weapons and white collar crimes.

According to prosecutors, Gardner is a career criminal who came to the Ojai area in 1993 and quickly began to defraud a number of people by managing to win the trust of his victims.

Senior Deputy District Attorney Marc Leventhal explained in1999 Gardner “fraudulently took a job as a bookkeeper based on a falsified resume and proceeded to destroy” Henderson Wood Floor of Ventura operated by Jane and James Henderson.

Over the five years he worked as a bookkeeper, he stole $1.5 million. Leventhal said Gardner was caught while trying to extort money from the Hendersons. Leventhal went on to add, “When he was prosecuted for that (extortion), he burned down the business. Once he was caught for that and put in jail, he tried to have his victims killed.”

According to the Star article, Gardner had served time in prison in the late 1960s for burglary and property crimes followed by a 1982 conviction for making false statements to obtain a firearm and again in 1990 for illegal possession of an assault rifle.

In executing two search warrants in 2004 and 2005, police seized exploding bullets, flechette darts, sword canes, metal throwing stars, three rifles, three shotguns, four handguns, 144 pounds of packaged ammunition, 350 revolver rounds and a copy of the “Anarchist Handbook”.

Lesson #1: Know who you are hiring. Check out a prospective employees’ resume or application even if it kills you (no pun intended).

Lesson #2: Set up internal controls and let your employees know you’re watching them.

Lesson #3: Don’t give a bookkeeper signature authority over any bank accounts. (However, I’m not sure that they did but, that is a common mistake.)