Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS : AT THE SCENE : Fugitive in Bizarre Faked Robbery Arrested After Surfacing in Alabama

When police arrived at Swiss Vaults Inc. in Santa Ana on July 9, 1977, they found owner Vincent M. Carrano tied and taped to a chair. The firm’s two vaults, which had contained private safe deposit boxes and about $1 million in precious metals, were stripped clean.

But a grand jury indictment later charged that Carrano and his partner, Jack E. Fulton of Corona del Mar, systematically had embezzled the metals over 15 months, then engineered the fake robbery.

Carrano was convicted of 30 counts of conspiracy, grand theft and insurance fraud in 1980 and sentenced to eight years in prison. While free on bail, pending an appeal of his conviction, Carrano fled Orange County.

Fulton, meanwhile, was sentenced to six years for his role and the sentence later was reduced to five years.

Last week, Carrano surfaced in Alabama. By week’s end, he had been returned to Orange County in the custody of two investigators from the district attorney’s office.

Alabama law enforcement officials contacted the Orange County district attorney’s office to pick up Carrano from their state, where he apparently faced charges of mail and wire fraud and conspiracy, according to Deputy Dist. Atty. Maurice Evans.