"Curren Price is Already in Big Legal Trouble. He Should Be Investigated (Much) Further" by Daniel Guss
Newly discovered documents (and others that are missing) raise red flags
@TheGussReport - After participating in last Tuesday’s LA City Council meeting, Councilmember Curren Price turned himself in to the LAPD to be arrested, booked and released for the 10 embezzlement, perjury and conflict of interest corruption charges he was slammed with earlier this summer.
Instead of walking across the street from City Hall to do this at LAPD headquarters, Price ignored his stated concerns about climate change and may have gone upward of 20 miles away, presumably in his nearly $50,000, gasoline-burning, taxpayer-funded/fixed and fueled SUV, to apparently get processed at the lower-visibility Van Nuys station.
Call me crazy, but I assume that he didn’t take the diseased and deadly (but eco-friendly!) Metro Red and Orange Lines there and back.
Technically, it was a work-related trip.
Kudos and thanks to political observer Alex Datig for the tip!
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I asked the LAPD why there is no publicly available mugshot for Price. Its Media Relations team said, “we do not release mugshots.” After I sent them the mugshot of OJ Simpson that they took after his arrest for double homicide in the 90s, they (after a few prompts) said they weren’t sure if they or the LASD released Simpson’s mugshot, but couldn’t state whether or when its policy had changed.
Perhaps the LAPD’s policy is that it does release mugshots, unless the arrestee votes on its budget. I reached that conclusion because it also won’t say whether Price spent any time in a jail cell during his two hours and nine minutes in custody.
HOT WATER CAN ALWAYS GET HOTTER
Price is in hot water because he faces the prospect of spending much of what remains of his life in prison and has postured that he intends to fight the charges. Bad idea. His alleged crimes were exclusively foreshadowed in my CityWatchLA columns since early 2017 and continually since then on this Substack. The LA County District Attorney’s office provides greater detail in this press release.
Note its last sentence: “The case remains under investigation by the District Attorney’s Bureau of Investigation.”
That’s good to hear, since they appear to have missed a lot. From this keyboard, it appears that additional counts of the same charges — and new criminal charges altogether — might be in order.
And not just for people named Curren Price.
PRICE’S SHELL GAME IS MORE MR. MAGOO THAN OCEAN’S 11
Having written more than a dozen columns about Price’s alleged criminal proclivities, they can best be described as bumbling, sloppy, dodgy and self-contradictory. As I have pointed out, his misleading statements under penalty of perjury and in the media are farcically grandiose.
Example: According to a 2012 divorce affidavit, Price attempted to serve his first wife, Lynn Suzette Price, divorce papers at an address where another lawyer of his later emphatically insisted that she never lived.
ABSURD: the house is owned by Price’s second wife, Delbra “Del” Richardson
INSANE: Richardson had other tenants in the house at the time
YOU’RE FUCKING KIDDING ME: Price and Richardson were both registered to vote at that address at the time. Did they vote using an address where they didn’t live? Did Price lie on the affidavit? Both?
Fortunately, the judge in his divorce case rejected those sworn assertions and the case stayed dormant for years until this column started digging in.
George Gascon, the LA County District Attorney, should scrutinize that entire affidavit as the following curiosities dovetail rather interestingly.
PRICE FAILED TO REPORT SPOUSAL INCOME AND BUSINESS OWNERSHIPS IN 2012
Politicians, candidates for public office and certain other government officials are required to file a Statement of Economic Interests, also known as a Form 700. These must include their spouse’s sources of income and business ownerships.
I set out to find Price’s 2012 Form 700 to see who he claimed was his spouse while he simultaneously ran for LA City Council and attempted to scam the divorce court.
The city’s Ethics portal only has those forms dating back to 2016.
Price and his taxpayer-salaried chief of staff Curtis Earnest have ignored my recent public records request, so that’s a further breach of his oath of office. I could force his hand on this at taxpayer expense, but I focused instead on “seek and ye shall find.”
And I did.
Price’s 2012 Form 700 lists no income or business interests for Lynn or Delbra. He knew and publicly represented that he was married to at least one of them, but failed to report this critical information for either.
By 2012, the law-degreed Price had already held numerous elected offices over many years, so he could hardly claim ignorance. But had he made these disclosures, he would have been forced to acknowledge that he was still married to Lynn or that Delbra owned the house where he falsely claimed in the affidavit that Lynn lived, while drawing rental income from the UCLA physician who actually resided there with her family.
What’s really unfortunate is that neither Ethics, the LA City Clerk, City Attorney nor City Controller hold our officials accountable for incomplete or untruthful Form 700s, and that’s how corruption flourishes.
In the last section, above, I mentioned that Price’s handiwork was, among other things, sloppy. Instead of filing a fresh Form 700 as a 2012 candidate for LA City Council, Price repurposed his then-most recent Form 700 as a member of the California State Senate, crossed out a few things, wrote in a few things and voila! A Form 700 that only listed the free meals and gifts he received in the prior year.
That opens the door to this question:
DID PRICE ALSO EMBEZZLE SPOUSAL BENEFITS WHILE IN THE STATE LEGISLATURE AND ON INGLEWOOD CITY COUNCIL?
Price has been charged with repeatedly embezzling public funds because he obtained spousal benefits for Delbra, to whom he was not married, while he was knowingly still married to Lynn.
I set out to discover whether Delbra received spousal benefits while he served in the State Senate, State Assembly and on Inglewood City Council.
Unfortunately, they all cited privacy rights that made such disclosures - to me - unlikely. I could fight it because the public may have a greater right to know. But Attorney General Rob Bonta would have no such problem, so this column will reach out to his office.
And that leads to the next eye-opening discovery.
CAN YOU BE MARRIED AND UNMARRIED AT THE SAME TIME?
Despite Price and Delbra repeatedly claiming to the appeasing media that they are married, Delbra declared under penalty of perjury at least once during his time in the state legislature that she was “an unmarried woman.”
A grant deed that Delbra Richardson signed on June 30, 2023, shows a real estate transaction that moved properties of hers in Inglewood out of an entity called the Richardson Living Trust.
The red flag here is that, at least as of August 28, 2007, she appears to have sworn under penalty of perjury that she is “an unmarried woman.”
This is why Bonta should investigate whether this “unmarried woman,” at least as of 2007, illegally received spousal benefits via Mr. Price while he served in the Assembly from December 4, 2006 – June 8, 2009 and in the Senate from June 8, 2009 – July 1, 2013.
And Gascon should compare this form to Price’s time in office in LA and Inglewood, where he served on its City Council from 2001-2006 after an earlier stint from 1993-1997.
WHERE EXACTLY DOES CURREN PRICE LIVE?
Thanks to former LA City Councilmember Richard Alarcon, Los Angeles political watchers know that it is a prosecutable crime to reside outside of the area that an elected official represents.
If you followed the columns I have published about Price’s dodgy exploits, you’ll know that I spent a great deal of time researching the address 4519 Don Arturo Place, and prosecutors should turn their attention to it, as well.
This hillside home with a view is located in LA City Council District 8, which is represented by Marqueece Harris-Dawson. Curren Price represents Council District 9, and has done so since July 1, 2013.
But for some reason, he and Delbra continued to use their Don Arturo address for all manner of serious correspondence, including but not limited to a federal tax lien that she settled on July 9, 2015, nearly three years after both of their voter registrations at that address ended on October 6, 2012.
Hey, do you know what’s funky?
Price tried to serve Lynn divorce papers at Don Arturo on January 18th, 19th and 21st in 2012… while he and Delbra continued to vote using that address as their residence.
Would that be voter registration fraud?
Or perhaps perjury and wire fraud for Price, his attorney “Little” Al Robles and their ironically named process server, Antonio Inocentes.
Perhaps both. Perhaps neither.
But definitely worth the prosecutors’ consideration.
So why, if you live in the 9th, and have a business address in Inglewood, would Delbra still have highly sensitive financial records mailed to the home where Price disingenuously tried to serve his first wife Lynn with divorce papers, while simultaneously pocketing an absurdly low rental income from the UCLA physician who reportedly lived there with her family?
I reached out several times to Delbra for comment on this and related matters, but she did not respond.
THE RENT IS AMAZING!
Delbra’s house on Don Arturo Place is magnificent, with a terrific hillside view. Zillow and Redfin place its value as high as $1.58mm to $1.61mm.
Standing ovation to Delbra for buying it in 2001 for just $345,000.
But do you know what else doesn’t make sense?
In his 2022 Form 700, Price claims that Delbra received no more than $10,000 in rent for it, and it was no typo. That’s the same gross income they claimed to receive from the same tenant, a UCLA physician and her family, for years.
So for all you crybabies complaining that the rent is too damn high, Curren Price should immediately be made Chair of City Council’s Housing Committee, because he figured out a way to house people in luxurious digs for just $833 a month (at most) for years and years without an increase.
Or there is a whole lot more that prosecutors, and perhaps the IRS and Franchise Tax Board, should investigate.
Because this column isn’t done yet, either.
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(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a multi-award-winning journalist. In June ‘23, he won the LA Press Club’s “Online Journalist of the Year” and “Best Activism Journalism” awards. He has been City Editor for the Mayor Sam network, and a featured contributor for CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Cumulus Media, KCRW 89.9 FM, KRLA 870 AM, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star-News, Los Angeles Downtown News and the Los Angeles Times in its sports, opinion, entertainment and Sunday Magazine sections among other publishers.)