Ledford co-defendant guilty
Miller pleads, is sentenced to probation
One of the two other co-defendants in former Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford’s criminal corruption case pleaded guilty to one count of misappropriation of public funds and was sentenced to two years probation on Thursday, according to Los Angeles Superior Court records.
Two other criminal counts for conspiracy and grand theft by embezzlement were dismissed against Susan Miller, the former AERO Institute executive director accused alongside Ledford and city consultant Kimberly Shaw with conspiring to embezzle hundreds of thousands of dollars in NASA funds from a Palmdale-based nonprofit educational organization the co-defendants ran.
The case is still pending against Ledford and Shaw, who are expected to be in court this week to resume the preliminary hearing intended to determine if there is enough evidence to proceed with a trial.
The preliminary hearing has stopped and started several times since beginning on Sept. 4. It is scheduled to continue on Wednesday.
Shaw is also scheduled for a probation and sentence hearing on Tuesday, according to court records.
In charges originally filed in June 2017, prosecutors allege Ledford was paid $60,000 a year without performing any substantial work for the organization, the AERO Institute.
Additional charges were filed in January 2018.
All three defendants pleaded not guilty when they were arraigned in August 2018.
Ledford was charged originally
with criminal conspiracy, with conflict of interest in voting in 2012 to award a seven-year city contract worth up to $3.9 million to Shaw and with three counts of perjury for allegedly failing to report income from the institute on financial disclosure statements.
In January 2018, an additional misdemeanor charge was filed against Ledford, accusing him of using an official position for personal gain.
The amended complaint accuses him of voting in 2016 to sell the building containing the Palmdale and Antelope Valley Hispanic chamber of commerce offices to the institute, which prosecutors say was secretly paying him more than $60,000 a year.
Shaw, a Yorba Linda resident, and Miller, of Las Vegas, were charged originally with conspiracy, grand theft by embezzlement of public funds and misappropriation of public funds.
Based on payment amounts alleged in the initial criminal complaint, Ledford was paid approximately $500,000 between August 2009 and September 2014 through Miller’s companies, whose income the complaint said came almost entirely from the institute, and between September 2014 and May directly from the institute.
Miller’s companies received more than $821,000 between August 2009 and September 2014 from the institute, according to payment amounts alleged in the initial criminal complaint.
In January 2018, additional charges were filed against Shaw saying she failed to disclose on AERO Institute tax forms for the 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 tax years that the institute paid her consulting company more than $100,000 in 2012, more than $150,000 in 2013, more than $150,000 in 2014 and more than $150,000 in 2015.
According to the original criminal complaint filed by the DA’s office, Shaw was a paid consultant to the AERO Institute, first under the name Shaw and Associates and then, starting in March 2013, as RL&M Management. RL&M Management was paid $12,581.67 monthly by the institute, or $150,980 a year.