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Friday, March 29, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Very Bad Man Gets Very Long Term

A 60-year-old Southern Californian was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison Friday for soliciting the murders and assaults of a federal judge, two prosecutors and two federal agents, all of whom helped convict him of fraud.

SANTA ANA, Calif. (CN) – A 60-year-old Southern Californian was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison Friday for soliciting the murders and assaults of a federal judge, two prosecutors and two federal agents, all of whom helped convict him of fraud.

John Arthur Walthall, of Laguna Beach, took it on the lam after being charged in 2009 with defrauding an elderly Orange County couple of $5.5 million. He was captured in Nevada in 2011, convicted and sentenced to 14 years in federal prison.

In 2014, family members of two inmates at the federal prison in Lompoc told the FBI that Walthall had asked for their relatives’ help in kidnapping U.S. District Judge Andrew Guilford, “forcing him to exonerate Walthall, cutting one of his eyes out and killing him by placing him in a wood chipper,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement Friday.

The FBI got one of the inmates and an undercover agent to repeat his plans, and record him.

A jury in July this year convicted him of soliciting the murders. He must serve the 20 years consecutively to the 14 he already is serving. Should he live so long.

Categories / Criminal, Trials

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