The jury trial against Craig Case, the former private investigator and ex–TV personality accused of embezzling nearly $700,000 from a Montecito arts patron, continued this week with revealing testimony from investigator Kristin Shamordola.
The District Attorney’s Office investigator laid out for the jury how Case used his now-deceased mother’s bank account to allegedly hide the source of the money.
One example, Shamordola testified, was a $10,000 check to Case from the bank account of the victim, Constance McCormick Fearing. The check was cut and signed by Fearing’s power of attorney, Nancy Coglizer, who testified against Case earlier in the trial and has already pleaded guilty to felony conspiracy charges.
Bank records displayed for the jury showed that the same day Coglizer wrote Case the check, he took it to the Wells Fargo branch on Anacapa Street. He pocketed $5,000 in cash and purchased a cashier’s check with the other $5,000. Eleven minutes later, he deposited the $5,000 cashier’s check into his mother, Erma’s, Montecito Bank and Trust account two blocks away.
The following day, Case cashed a $5,000 check made out to him from Erma’s bank account. Shamordola testified that, based on her study of Case’s handwriting, the check was written and signed by him, not Erma.
According to bank records, none of the initial $10,000 touched Craig Case’s bank accounts, but he ended up with $10,000 cash in less than 24 hours. This way, the investigator explained, Case’s bank statements would not show that the money originally came from Fearing’s account.
This transactional saga was executed by Case dozens of times over the three years that Coglizer was writing him checks from Fearing’s account. While failing to cite a legitimate reason Case may have done this, Shamordola was able to think of an illegitimate one. “It’s a good way to hide the source of the money,” she said.
Sometimes, there were multiple checks from his mother’s account deposited into Case’s on the same day. Case would “stagger the deposits,” possibly to avoid the federal reporting requirement of cash transactions more than $10,000, Shamordola said. Additionally, Case had been instructing Coglizer to divide larger amounts into two or three smaller, separate checks — likely for the same reason, prosecutor Brian Cota asserted.
Tens of thousands of dollars per month entered and almost immediately exited Erma Case’s bank account at the hands of her son, bank records show. At the same time, Case owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in payroll taxes to the IRS, and the agency was garnishing income from his security business.
Susan DiMaggio, or Susie the Tax Lady, was employed by Case in 2021 to help him with his unfiled tax returns for 2018, 2019, and 2020, she testified. DiMaggio soon discovered that, although Case withheld taxes from his employees’ wages, he never sent them to the IRS.
When Case’s mother passed away, he inherited her assets. Case received more than $400,000 from the sale of her mobile home in April 2022, but there is no evidence that he deposited this money anywhere for several months, said Shamordola.
In September 2022, Case purchased a cashier’s check for a bit less than $400,000 and kept the rest of the mobile home money (about $10,000) in cash. “Eight or nine months later, it appears in his Merrill Lynch account,” Shamordola testified. He also took out $45,000 in cash. About a month later, Case was arrested and the remaining funds were frozen.
When pressed by Cota as to why one might purchase a cashier’s check instead of simply depositing the original check, Shamordola said, “It conceals the fact that you have those funds from any public agency or entity.”
The trial will continue through the week with closing arguments scheduled Friday.
