Ventura County Courthouse Briefs
Thursday March 13, 2025
A Salinas man has pleaded not guilty to murdering the current boyfriend of his former girlfriend in Oxnard.
24-year-old Gonzalo Garciarodriguez of Salinas was arrested Tuesday in connection with the February 23rd fatal stabbing of 26-year-old Eugenio Lopez Ramirez of Oxnard.
Ramirez was found that night in the 100 block of Wilson Avenue in Oxnard suffering from multiple stab wounds.
He died later at VCMC.
Major Crimes detectives spent two weeks developing information that led them to arrest Garciarodriquez for murder.
He was arrested for the Ramirez homicide while already in the Ventura County Jail where he had been since February 27th for a domestic violence crime that occurred back on February 5th allegedly involving assault with a deadly weapon and false imprisonment by force.
He had pleaded not guilty in that case as well.
In addition to pleading not guilty murder in the death of Ramirez, Garciarodriguez also denied a special allegation that it was a first degree murder.
He remains in the Ventura County Jail where he is being held without bail.
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An Oxnard woman has pleaded not guilty to charges that she stole $3,000 from the 81-year-old Ojai area woman she worked for as a caretaker.
Prosecutors claim that 25-year-old Heather Moore of Oxnard "took advantage of the victim's cognitive decline and altered checks made out to her."
They allege that more than $3,000 in checks that were intended to pay for goods for the woman were altered and forged by Moore so that they were made payable to her and then deposited into her account.
They say an alert bookkeeper noticed the changes and alerted the elderly woman's family and the authorities were notified.
Moore has pleaded not guilty to four felony counts having to do with a victim who is considered an elder or dependent adult.
Those charges include identity theft, theft from an elder, forgery, and unauthorized use of someone else's identifying information.
She remains free on bail and is due back in court on April 9th.
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Ventura County authorities with the help of U-S Postal Service investigators managed to save and Ojai woman from losing $10,000 to a scam.
The Ventura County Sheriff's Office says that on February 20th a deputy responded to a report of fraud and theft by false pretenses.
The 66-year-old Ojai woman said that a man had showed up at her front door claiming to be an employee of the Wells Fargo Bank Fraud Department.
He told the woman the bank believed that fraudulent charges had been made to her credit card by unknown subjects in Florida.
The man convinced her she needed to close her current account, open a new one, and withdraw $10,000 and sent it to an address in Florida.
Fearing financial hardship she did what he said and mailed the money to Florida.
Ojai detectives quickly alerted the United States Postal Service who intercepted the package with the money before it got to Florida and returned the money to the woman.
Now the effort is to identify the scammers and arrest them.
