RESEDA : Man to Be Jailed Over Non-Payment of Fines

A Reseda man who has been convicted twice on fraud-related charges was ordered Thursday to spend nine months in jail for not proving his claim that he can’t pay the fines from one of the earlier cases, authorities said.

Duane Joseph Dwyer, 64, had been ordered to explain why he is unable to pay $9,230 in restitution and investigative costs from a 1993 conviction. In that case, Dwyer charged an undercover investigator from the state Bureau of Automotive Repair hundreds of dollars for unnecessary repairs to a motor home, the city attorney’s office said.

Dwyer pleaded no contest to the 1993 charges, which included grand theft.

“The court, I believe, got tired of hearing the defendant say, ‘I don’t have any money,’ ” said P. Greg Parham of the city attorney’s Consumer Protection Unit. “It penalized him for essentially trying to defraud the court much like he defrauded the victims in the two previous cases.”

But Dwyer’s attorney said Thursday’s sentence was unfair. Robert Burns said his client lives on slightly more than $800 a month in Social Security payments and was legitimately unclear about what he could provide the court to substantiate his hardship.

“I just don’t think he satisfied the judge and the city attorney that that was all the money he had and that it was easily spent on the necessities of life,” Burns said.

At the time of the 1993 sting operation at Dwyer’s America En Route Inc. in North Hills, Dwyer was still on probation for a 1991 conviction, the city attorney’s office said. In that case, Dwyer’s Motor Holidays Ltd. charged a Canoga Park couple more than $1,000 for mostly unauthorized work.

He was ordered to spend 30 days in jail and 90 days on a state Department of Transportation work crew after he pleaded no contest to the 1991 charges.

On Thursday, Los Angeles Municipal Judge Susan Isacoff ordered Dwyer to appear July 6 to begin serving the nine-month term, the city attorney’s office said.