A former attorney convicted of a string of offenses in four prior cases pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges that she took $2 million from elderly property owners and others in an alleged real estate fraud scheme.
Angela Fawn Wallace, 57, of West Hills, is now charged with 72 felony counts, including identity theft, grand theft, forgery and procuring a false document for recording for allegedly befriending elderly victims or locating properties where the owners were already deceased to get her name placed on the titles for the properties in different areas of Los Angeles, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office.
In December 2002, Wallace was convicted of grand theft of personal property, forgery and perjury involving a $380,000 life insurance policy that was owed to Howard Byrdsong, 20, and his brother, Jontrae, 18, after their mother, a police officer, Shiree Arrant, died of natural causes.
The two brothers were killed in June 2001 by a man dressed as a postal worker, who knocked on the door of the Inglewood home where they were staying after their mother's death.
Timothy Mack--who was tried with Wallace and convicted of grand theft and perjury--was subsequently charged in July 2005 with orchestrating the killings of the Byrdsong brothers, along with the April 2000 revenge murder of Norman Fields in a Los Angeles shopping center parking lot in a crime that authorities said was not connected to the Byrdsong slayings.
All three killings were carried out by Waymond Jackson, who at the time was the boyfriend of one of Mack's nieces, Deputy District Attorney Ron Goudy said. Jackson was shot to death in October 2001, but police did not know if his killing was connected to the three homicides, according to Goudy.
Mack, who lived in Marina del Rey, wanted the brothers dead because Howard Byrdsong went to the District Attorney's Office to report the theft, Goudy said.
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Mack was convicted in March 2006 of the three killings and was sentenced the following month to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
After Wallace was convicted and sentenced to state prison on the theft case involving the Byrdsong brothers, she was subsequently convicted in three other cases on charges including grand theft, conspiracy to commit a crime and subornation of perjury, according to the criminal complaint.
Wallace was arrested Tuesday by investigators from the District Attorney's Office in connection with the latest case, in which she could face more than 40 years in state prison if convicted as charged.
