Landlord Gets 12-Year Prison Term for Arson at Two Buildings : Courts: Fires were set while tenants slept inside apartments. Judge, in imposing maximum punishment, calls 64-year-old man a ‘real danger to society.’

A La Habra landlord was sentenced to 12 years in state prison Friday after admitting he set fire last year to two of his apartment buildings, as tenants slept, to collect insurance money.

Gheorghe Alexandroai, a 64-year-old Romanian immigrant, briefly apologized during the sentencing hearing in Orange County Superior Court. In broken English, he pleaded for leniency, citing his age.

Alexandroai had vehemently maintained his innocence before pleading guilty in March to eight counts of arson and attempted arson.

“He is sorry for what he did,” said Alexandroai’s lawyer, Kenneth L. Hicks. “He realizes it’s a serious event.”

But Orange County Superior Court Judge Jean Rheinheimer imposed the maximum punishment allowed under state law and said Alexandroai deserved a much stiffer sentence.

“I consider this man a real danger to society,” Rheinheimer said. Turning to Alexandroai, she added, “A life sentence itself would not be incompatible with the crimes you have committed.”

Alexandroai will be eligible for parole in about five years. Rheinheimer also imposed $55,000 in fines, though Hicks said Alexandroai has lost his properties through foreclosure.

In January, 1994, Alexandroai set a fire to an apartment building in the 8600 block of Cerritos Avenue in Stanton, and last April he set a fire in the 1500 block of West Ball Road in Anaheim. No one was hurt in those fires or in two failed arson attempts at another occupied complex in Anaheim.

Tenants who were in the buildings during the fires said they are still haunted by thoughts of what might have happened.

“If my wife didn’t wake up to hear the crackling of the fire or wake us up, we would have burned,” said Michael Stellar, whose wife and two children were with him in an Anaheim apartment building that Alexandroai set afire in the early morning hours on April 7, 1994. “I think about it every day.”

The prosecutor said he was pleased that Alexandroai received the maximum sentence possible.

“What he did showed a complete callousness for human life,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Mike Fell. “The things he tried to do to collect money is unforgivable.”

The two fires caused a total of about $62,000 in damage. Investigators found evidence that gasoline-soaked rags and milk jugs containing gasoline had been used to start them.

Alexandroai also twice tried to set fire to another property he owned in the 1500 block of West Ball Road in Anaheim. In one of those cases, investigators found a trail of gasoline-soaked rags that failed to ignite. In the other, they discovered containers holding about seven gallons of gasoline in a storage area.

At the time of his arrest, Alexandroai told authorities that the fires were set by disgruntled tenants. In a jailhouse interview later, he told a reporter that he had been set up by investigators who were looking for an easy suspect.

But Alexandroai later admitted setting the fires and said in a probation interview that he did so because he was saddled with buildings he could not sell.

“I wanted to sell but I couldn’t sell. I wanted to give the property back to the bank, but they wouldn’t take it back,” he is quoted as saying in a Probation Department report prepared earlier this month. Alexandroai said he pleaded guilty because he hoped his cooperation would mean a lighter sentence.

“I fell into mud and I don’t know what to do. I will do whatever it takes to do less time,” he said in the report.

Fell said Alexandroai collected about $52,000 in payments from the two arson fires. The insurance company also had paid him $217,000 after a 1992 fire at another building he owned in Stanton and $50,000 after a 1993 fire at a property in Mira Loma. But Fell said those fires were ruled accidental and were not included in the arson charges to which Alexandroai pleaded guilty.