Buttafuoco Charged With Fraud in Auto Repair Probe

Former Long Island resident Joey Buttafuoco -- the auto mechanic whose domestic dramas made him a tabloid news staple in the early 1990s -- was arrested Wednesday in Chatsworth on insurance fraud charges.

Ten other owners or employees of auto repair shops in Canoga Park, La Puente, Pomona and El Monte were also arrested on fraud charges as part of a sweeping, multi-agency investigation into alleged scams at Southern California garages.

In a prepared statement, the Los Angeles district attorney’s office alleged that in September, Buttafuoco, co-owner of a Chatsworth auto shop, helped investigators posing as customers file fraudulent insurance claims on undamaged cars. He also prepared fraudulent car-repair estimates, and advised the undercover officers on “how to best scam” insurance companies, the statement said.

Buttafuoco, 47, who was charged with three counts of insurance fraud and one count of grand theft, is being held in lieu of $50,000 bail. If convicted, he faces up to six years in state prison.

The state Bureau of Automotive Repair, which was among numerous agencies involved in the investigation, is also attempting to suspend or revoke the license of Buttafuoco’s shop, California Collision.

Buttafuoco became a household name in 1992, when his lover, Amy Fisher, then 17, was arrested for shooting Buttafuoco’s wife.

Fisher was sentenced to five to 15 years and released in 1999. She is a columnist for a Long Island newspaper.

Buttafuoco briefly served jail time for statutory rape and was placed on probation. He moved to the San Fernando Valley in the mid-1990s.

In 1995, he served 78 days in jail for violating his probation after soliciting sex from an undercover police officer on Sunset Boulevard.