Unrepentant Con Man Gets 10 Years in Jail

A 32-year-old con man who posed as a 17-year-old high school student was sentenced Thursday to 10 years in custody for defrauding Ventura County businesses and an Ojai couple who took him in.

The sentence was imposed in Ventura County Superior Court by Judge Kenneth R. Yegan as David Michael Murray, alias Shi Stone, listened impassively. Murray was convicted by a Superior Court jury last month of 12 counts of fraud.

“It is a very interesting case. I don’t believe I have ever seen somebody with so many felony convictions for still a very young age,” Yegan told the court.

Yegan added that Murray was obviously intelligent, but his choice of a career was unfortunate. “I don’t know if you are the Leonardo da Vinci for fraud, but you are in the running for that. You are very good at it,” said Yegan.

Yegan singled out Murray’s defrauding of an Ojai couple who took him in.

“It was really unconscionable--the trust they gave to you, the love, the care--and it was all a lie, a fraud,” Yegan said.

Yegan sentenced Murray to the maximum of three years in state prison for defrauding the couple and another three years for conning businesses out of items ranging from bicycles to dental braces.

Two years in prison were added to the sentence because of Murray’s convictions in six prior felonies in Ventura County and other states. Yegan also sentenced Murray to two years in County Jail for four misdemeanor charges of defrauding innkeepers.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Charles R. Roberts Sr. had asked Yegan to impose the maximum sentence.

“With regard to lack of remorse, the defendant is utterly unique,” Roberts said.

Murray, who acted as his own counsel, had little to say.

“I agree with Chuck. Whatever Chuck wants, he will get. Let’s do it,” Murray told Yegan.

Testimony revealed that Murray had assumed a number of identities--including posing as a 17-year-old high school student and a cross-country bicyclist--in Ventura County last year.

In Ojai, Murray pretended to be Shi Stone, the hemophiliac teen-age son of a military officer wounded in the invasion of Panama.

Ken and Dorothy Johnson of Ojai testified that they believed Murray’s story when they took him in and fed him. Court records show that Murray attended Nordhoff High School in Ojai briefly.

Witnesses testified that Murray often established his fake identities ahead of time, sending Mailgrams to his victims before his arrival.

Jurors found Murray guilty of fraud when he sent a Mailgram to Open Air Bicycles in Ventura confirming billing arrangements for a bike. Posing as cycling marathoner Steve Randallson, Murray pedaled away on a $732 Trek touring bike.

Throughout the trial, Murray insisted he was really Shi Stone, a misunderstood teen-ager. But in a March interview with The Times, he bragged openly about his skills as a con artist.

“Ojai was wide open to me,” Murray said. “I could have taken the entire town.”

Murray must serve four years of his sentence before he will be eligible for parole, said Roberts, who called the sentence fair.

“It is the maximum, and I think it is appropriate. Judge Yegan did not give that sentence to the defendant to please me or to please the public or to please the victims. It was the only appropriate sentence you can give to a defendant if you have read the probation report with his criminal history,” Roberts said.

Murray’s case was one of the last Superior Court cases for Yegan, who was recently appointed associate justice of the 2nd District Court of Appeal.