News briefs from San Diego area

The Associated Press
Associated Press

SAN DIEGO - The Miramar Marine Corps Air Station is now back in the sights of regional airport officials as a deadline looms to select a site as an alternative to Lindbergh Field.

Councilman Tony Young proposed joint use of bases at Miramar, North Island or Camp Pendleton during the three-hour San Diego County Regional Airport Authority's strategic planning committee meeting Monday.

The military has no interest in a joint-use airport at Miramar, but Young said the authority should consider a stand-alone operation at Miramar. The authority is facing a May target for a site decision.

"Let's find ways in which we can come up with a solution together," Young said. "Let's make a deal."

But Marine and Navy leaders have said the current Miramar/North Island/Camp Pendleton base combination offers an ideal configuration of strength and readiness that can't be duplicated anywhere else in the world.

Young's motion was approved 3-1 and now goes to the full board of directors next week.

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SAN DIEGO (AP) - The ringleader of a telemarketing Ponzi scam was sentenced to nearly five years in prison and six others got terms ranging from 10 months to 3 1/2 years.

Investors were defrauded out of more than $18 million with the promise of easy money through infomercials.

The leader of the scheme was Mark McClafferty, 40, who was sentenced by a federal judge on Friday. Through his Progressive Financial and Commercial Express firms, more than 700 people invested money in 1997 and 1998.

U.S. District Judge Napoleon Jones also ordered McClafferty and several executives to pay $15.5 million in restitution. But prosecutor Steven Peak said it was unlikely investors will get all of their money back.

Investor money supposedly paid for television time and investors were told they would be paid from the sales of products. Infomercials touting products such as a mosquito repellent, a hair band and a device to jump-start cars were produced.

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VISTA, Calif. (AP) - A judge refused to lower the $2 million bail for each of the five men charged with plotting the deaths of three people, including two brothers owed money for offshore sports bets.

Deputy District Attorney Tom Manning told Superior Court Judge Adrienne Orfield on Monday that associates of the defendants, as well as some of the accused, admitted to the alleged murder plot.

Scott Lee Sepulveda, 24, Bryan Speicher, 22, and Brian Edward McConnell, 25, all of Carlsbad, as well as Joseph Micah Shiller, 21, of Encinitas and Carlos Luis Ramirez, 25, a sailor aboard the USS Tarawa, were each charged with three counts of conspiracy to commit murder and one count of conspiracy to kidnap. They all also face gang allegations.

Prosecutors said many of the defendants met while attending La Costa Canyon High School and they were members of the "Shadow Crew," an affluent gang that supposedly modeled itself after "The Sopranos."

The defendants sold drugs and committed robberies, Manning said, and they allegedly plotted the killings during a meeting earlier this year.

"This group got together to kill three people," Manning said. "Mr. Sepulveda owed a sizable gambling debt."

Investigators said one of the gang members told police he was ordered to kill two brothers who were bookies. A March 16 police raid at the homes of defendants turned up about 25 handguns and rifles, ammunition, handcuffs and ski masks, police said.

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OCEANSIDE, Calif. (AP) - Toxic dirt imported to the site of a housing project has shut down construction.

Additionally, officials don't know what happened to at least 1,000 cubic yards of the contaminated soil from a downtown lot where the city and the North County Transit District are building a parking garage.

Construction of three homes on Barnwell Street was halted by the city last week after tests showed high levels of petroleum hydrocarbons, a neurotoxic substance that can affect the eyes, skin and respiratory system.

"It is our opinion that soil that was transported from the transit center to the site is a probable source of elevated petroleum hydrocarbons in fill soil at the site," read a report by the Taylor Group.

The report recommended that the top 3 feet of contaminated soil be excavated and replaced.

A month ago, city transportation director Frank Watanabe assured residents that "all of the soils that were contaminated were sent to Arizona (to be placed in a landfill)."

"It's unbelievable," Councilwoman Shari Mackin said. "With the background we had on that transit center parking lot, now this soil ends up in a residential neighborhood. How?"

Oceanside civil engineer Gary Kellison, who is managing the parking garage project, said Monday that the contaminated soil at the garage site was "identified and segregated."

Kellison said he did not know how contaminated soil reached the Barnwell project, or whether more contaminated soil had been shipped outside of the city for use in other projects.