2 Who Bilked San Pedro Firm Captured

Law enforcement officials have captured a former Rolling Hills Estates couple who fled the state after pleading no contest last year to embezzling tens of thousands of dollars from a San Pedro insurance agency.

Deputies arrested James Mulchahey, 65, on Oct. 9 when he went to a Wells Fargo bank in Rolling Hills to handle some paperwork on an account. His wife, Georgia, 60, was caught 10 days later when she tried to pick up her mail at a Las Vegas postal box.

The Mulchaheys had been on the lam at least since Nov. 30, 1989, when they failed to appear in Long Beach Superior Court for sentencing on grand theft charges for stealing from the office accounts of Bernard O’Neal’s Harbor Insurance Agency, a 57-year fixture on Gaffey Street.

Judge Richard Charvat sentenced the couple in absentia to four years in state prison.

Although the Mulchaheys had pleaded no contest in July, 1989, to the theft of about $34,000, O’Neal said audits conducted since then have turned up evidence that the couple made off with at least $151,000 from his office accounts, and possibly as much as $200,000.

Investigators said Georgia Mulchahey wrote thousands of dollars in checks against Harbor Insurance Agency accounts to open her husband’s competing insurance business, Marina General Insurance Agency, just two miles from O’Neal’s office.

In addition, investigators revealed on Wednesday that the Mulchaheys now face additional grand theft, forgery and conspiracy charges for allegedly faking a deed on an acquaintance’s Rancho Palos Verdes house and collecting a $280,000 home loan shortly before skipping town.

O’Neal said he had employed Georgia Mulchahey as an office manager for about four years, but he did not become suspicious of her until she began asking him to withdraw money from his personal bank account to cover the agency’s operating expenses.

In response, he authorized an audit of the business by an accountant, who discovered that money was missing.

O’Neal, 88, said he is in failing health, but the news of the Mulchaheys’ capture has buoyed his spirits.

“I’m mighty glad,” he said. “I’m glad to be alive long enough to know that they’re in custody. . . . I’m being consoled by the fact that they’re in custody and they’re not eligible for bail now. I’m just glad that I get to see that there is justice.”

Sgt. Paul Scauzillo of the sheriff’s Fugitive Detail said investigators believe the Mulchaheys had been in both Utah and Nevada since their escape, but they temporarily returned to the South Bay area just a few weeks ago.

FBI agents had flagged their old Rolling Hills bank account. When James Mulchahey called the branch to ask questions, a teller talked him into coming to the branch to handle paperwork on the account. When he arrived, deputies were waiting.

Deputies tried to arrest Georgia Mulchahey at a Howard Johnson’s in Torrance, but she apparently had checked out of the couple’s motel room 15 minutes before they arrived.

“We figure she was in the (bank) parking lot watching and as soon as she saw the cops, she split,” Scauzillo said.

FBI agents set up a surveillance on two post office boxes, one in Nevada and the other in Utah, that they discovered had been used by the Mulchaheys. They captured Georgia when she arrived at one of them wearing a blond wig as a disguise.

She has since refused to cooperate with efforts to extradite her back to California, Scauzillo said.

O’Neal, who has sold his agency since the criminal case against the Mulchaheys began, said the Mulchaheys have not changed his basic faith in people.

“I still like people and I trust them,” he said. “Justice is being done, and that’s what matters.”