Woman Given 2-Year Term in Home Remodeling Fraud

An Arleta woman was sentenced Friday to two years in state prison for a home-repair fraud scheme in which prosecutors said she took homeowners’ money for remodeling projects that she left in an unfinished shambles.

Edith Aristizabal, 43, was sentenced in San Fernando Superior Court under terms of a plea bargain she made last month when she pleaded no contest to seven felony theft counts. She also pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor theft charge.

Prosecutors said Aristizabal, who ran a North Hollywood company called Applied Construction, took a combined $39,000 from seven families for construction jobs that were never finished.

It was not immediately clear why Aristizabal and her Orange County attorney, David Chavez, agreed to accept the prison term as part of the plea agreement. Chavez could not be reached for comment after the sentencing by Judge Meredith C. Taylor.

No Prior Felonies

The prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert S. Nishinaka, said a prison term was appropriate for several reasons even though Aristizabal had not been convicted of a felony before the home-repair frauds occurred.

“You have a number of victims who are out great sums of money,” Nishinaka said. “Because her business was in such poor financial condition, it seems highly unlikely that she would be able to comply with any restitution order.”

Were she put on probation and ordered to make restitution, the prosecutor said, “the feeling was the only way she might make restitution is if she ripped off somebody else.”

Taylor noted during the sentencing that several victims told a probation officer that they wanted Aristizabal to receive a stiff prison sentence.

According to the probation officer’s report, a Sun Valley man hired Aristizabal to build a bedroom, den and kitchen for his invalid father. Because the job was never finished, the father had to be moved back to Missouri, where he died.

Company Paid $12,000

The report said the man “feels that all the shuffling of his father contributed to that death.” He had paid the construction company $12,000.

Another victim, a Mission Hills woman, said Aristizabal “should stay in jail for the rest of her life,” the report said. The woman spent $11,200 and was without a bathroom for several months because of Aristizabal, the report said.

According to the report, Aristizabal said she was a poor business manager and was overwhelmed by the construction business. Rather than deliberately defrauding people, she mistakenly believed that she could use money from future projects to complete projects for which she had already contracted, she told a probation officer.

Aristizabal was arrested in May after a disgruntled former employee named her on a Spanish-language television program about unpaid workers. One of Aristizabal’s clients saw the broadcast and complained to the state Contractors’ License Board, which began the investigation, Nishinaka said.