Of Hollywood Glam-Scams And Stinkin' Judges

Hi-res pictures of Alison Heruth-Waterbury, left, are hard to come by -- and they'll probably get harder to find after today.

Ms. H-W, whose ethics are apparently smaller than her cup size, was going to star in a new TV series based on the Dept. of Homeland Security to be produced by Hollywood producer Joseph Medawar. Medawar was so taken with his starlet he rented her a $40K a month mansion.

He also bought himself cars, jewelry and high-priced meals and enjoyed costly shopping sprees -- blowing through at least $2.6 million that he raised from small investors to fund the show. Nary a scene was ever shot.

Today's LAT describes some of the pre-sentencing testimony:

At Monday's hearing, the courtroom was packed with Medawar's relatives and victims.

Carmen Wood, 71, of Southgate, who invested $10,000 from her family trust, talked about how she blindly put her faith in Medawar and his idea the day she met him at a Whittier church, and how disappointed she was that someone would misuse Christianity to target innocent people for financial gain.

"I am asking that justice be served here for me and these people here who lost money," she said, later turning to look straight at Medawar and saying. "May God be your judge."

Lozano, who lost $120,000, told the story of another investor who could not be in court Tuesday. The man, suffering from lung cancer, had scraped up $1,000 to give Medawar, banking on the hope that once the production company went public, as promised, it would bring the payday he needed for a special medical procedure that could have saved his life. "His illness got the best of him," Lozano said of the man, who died "waiting for the money."

Judge Manuel L. Real -- a Lyndon Johnson appointee -- who at 82 is described by LAT as "a lightning rod for criticism, with a reputation for a peremptory and even cantankerous temperament on the bench" was not impressed. He sentenced Medawar was to a year and a day in prison, far less than the 5-year-ish sentence the feds were after.

Real's already faced impeachment hearings once. Let's do it again.

Related Tags: Crime, Medawar, Hollywood