Police Arrest Fugitive Embezzler Mulchahey in Hotel on Vegas Strip

Police and FBI agents on Thursday recaptured a former Rolling Hills Estates woman who disappeared after pleading no contest last year to charges she embezzled tens of thousands of dollars from her San Pedro employer.

Georgia Mulchahey, 60, was arrested in the Flamingo Hilton on the Las Vegas strip shortly after 12:30 p.m.

Los Angeles officials, who had searched nearly a year for Mulchahey were outraged earlier this week when a Las Vegas justice of the peace released her on a $10,000 bond after her Oct. 19 arrest there. Responding to the protests, the justice revoked the bond Tuesday and ordered Mulchahey brought back to court, but investigators could not find her because she was not at the address she had left with authorities.

Two Los Angeles detectives, flown to Las Vegas to bring a prisoner back in an unrelated case, joined the search for Mulchahey late Wednesday.

Thursday, those detectives, along with a Las Vegas Metro Police officer and two FBI agents, confronted Mulchahey in her room at the hotel and took her back into custody, Las Vegas Metro Police Sgt. Julie Goldberg said.

Mulchahey, who was fighting efforts to extradite her to California, will be returned to Los Angeles as soon as a governor’s warrant can be secured in Sacramento, said Sgt. Paul Scauzillo of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Fugitive Detail.

“She’s a real character,” he said. “Apparently, she had stayed in town to hire a property management company to take care of her rentals (in Las Vegas). She told them she was going to be out of town.”

Mulchahey and her husband, James, 65, pleaded no contest in July, 1989, to the theft of about $34,000 from the office accounts of Bernard O’Neal’s Harbor Insurance Agency in San Pedro.

The couple was sentenced in absentia to four years in state prison after they failed to appear in Long Beach Superior Court on Nov. 30, 1989.

James Mulchahey was arrested in Rolling Hills on Oct. 9.

Since their disappearance, O’Neal said further audits of his office accounts have turned up evidence that the couple made off with at least $151,000, and possibly as much as $200,000.

In addition, the couple face new charges of grand theft, forgery and conspiracy for allegedly faking a deed on an acquaintance’s Rancho Palos Verdes house to collect a $280,000 home loan shortly before skipping town.