Man Gets 1 Year for Travel Agency Heist

A member of a ring that robbed travel agencies in the San Fernando Valley was sentenced Thursday to a year in County Jail and three years’ probation, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

Oswaldo Arevalo, 34, was also ordered by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Gregg Marcus to pay about $1,800 in restitution to travel agency owner Myong Siemen, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Keri Modder. The Van Nuys man had pleaded no contest to one count of robbery.

Arevalo was arrested after he and three other men held up a Granada Hills travel agency last August and took blank airline tickets.

Two other suspects--Jose Rafael Figueroa and Mario Guerrero--were fatally shot by members of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Special Investigations Section shortly after the Aug. 14 robbery. Police said Figueroa and Guerrero did not comply with orders to surrender.

Investigators believed that the ring was connected to at least 25 travel agency robberies, many of them in the Valley, where blank airline tickets were taken during daytime holdups.

Arevalo faced a maximum of five years in state prison, but the court took into account the fact that he wasn’t one of the men who used a gun, Modder said. Arevalo helped plan the crime and was down the street when the robbery happened, she added.

His co-defendant, Manuel Ernesto Echeverria, has already been sentenced to three years in state prison.