Walnut Man Gets 8 Years for Fake Disney Pin Scam

Larry James Allred, a convicted rapist, accepted a plea bargain in March from a Orange County Superior Court judge over the objections of prosecutors.
A convicted rapist was sentenced today to eight years in prison for his role in a scheme to import more than $200,000 in counterfeit Disney pins from China to sell online.
Larry James Allred, 58, of Walnut, accepted a plea bargain from Orange County Superior Court Judge Robert Fitzgerald in March. Prosecutors objected to the plea deal.
If Allred had been convicted at trial he would have faced 25 years to life in prison because it would be considered a third strike, Deputy District Attorney Chuck Lawhorn said. Allred was twice convicted of rape in the 1970s, Lawhorn added.
Allred, who has been in custody since June 2011, will have to do 80 percent of his time behind bars because of his prior convictions, Lawhorn said.
Fitzgerald ordered Allred to make $201,000 in restitution, Lawhorn said.
Messages left with Allred's attorney, Ernest Eady, were not immediately returned.
Allred was convicted in 1975 of kidnapping a woman at gunpoint from a shopping mall and raping her, Lawhorn said. While on parole for that crime in 1978, he kidnapped two girls, ages 16 and 17, at gunpoint and "subjected them over a seven-day ordeal to multiple rapes and other sexual crimes," the prosecutor said.
A new third-strike law gives judges more flexibility when sentencing defendants for a third conviction that is of a non-violent nature, but it also allows for life sentences for non-violent crimes when they are preceded by convictions for rape or child molestation, Lawhorn said.
Co-defendant Robert Edward Smyrak, 54, of Anaheim, pleaded guilty on Sept. 28, 2011, to felony manufacturing and sale of counterfeit goods and was sentenced to a year in jail and three years of probation.
The scheme involved sending legitimate pins to China to be duplicated and having them returned to the United States so the pair could sell them online, Lawhorn said.
The two worked together between January 2010 and April 2011, he said.
"It was a substantial operation," Lawhorn said, adding there's evidence Allred had been in the counterfeit pin business going back to 2000.
The scheme unraveled in February 2011 when U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers intercepted a package at Los Angeles International Airport addressed to Smyrak. The package contained more than 150 pounds of the bogus Disney pins.
When they were arrested, the two had more than 91,000 counterfeit pins, Lawhorn said.
--City News Service