Calling her a thief and a criminal, Judge Ariadne Symons sentenced a former real estate broker to eight years in custody on 15 charges of embezzlement and passing bad checks.
Louisa Katrina Dubinsky, 54, was originally charged with 39 counts of embezzlement, financial elder abuse and writing bad checks. She was accused of bilking her clients out of more than $500,000. Under a plea agreement, she pleaded no contest last month to 15 charges of embezzlement and passing bad checks. Eight years behind bars was the maximum sentence Dubinsky faced under the terms of the plea bargain.
In court Wednesday, several people who had been bilked out of money by Dubinsky spoke before she was sentenced.
Dubinsky was president of Vision Lending and Investment, which had offices in Capitola and Santa Cruz, at the time the crimes were committed. She also did business as Mariposa Mortgage and e-visionlending.com. Her mortgage broker’s license was revoked in 2008 after an administrative law judge found three trust funds handled by her firm were short $187,000.
Many of those for whom Dubinsky acted as a fiduciary said she became unreachable, stopped returning their calls and seemed to altogether disappear.
William Mitchell, who lost thousands of dollars because of Dubinsky, called her a pathological liar who “stole his entire life.”
“Because of her actions and lies, for the first time in my life, I fell on hard times,” said Mitchell, who said he lost his home, his car, his health insurance, his 401k and his IRA because of the embezzlement. “I don’t have another 35 years to earn back what she had stolen from me.”
Charges were filed against Dubinsky in 2009 but she was not arrested until February 2011, when she turned herself into Santa Cruz County authorities after she appeared on the county’s Most Wanted list in January. Dubinsky was living in Hollister at the time and has claimed she was unaware there was a warrant out for her arrest.
Dubinsky’s attorney asked Judge Symons to consider probation over custody, to allow his client the opportunity to keep working in order to make restitution to the victims, but Symons rejected that proposal. She said she didn’t believe Dubinsky would actually pay the victims back.
At one point in Dubinsky’s apology to the court, Symons asked her “you understand you’re not the victim here, right? You’re acting like the victim.”
Symons said she did not believe probation would be appropriate and that she didn’t believe Dubinsky was truly remorseful. She sentenced Dubinsky to the maximum of eight years and said the court specifically declined to authorize any form of alternative custody, such as work-release or electronic monitoring. Dubinsky will also have to pay restitution.
