Three defendants sentenced for conspiring to murder prosecutor
January 26, 2011
By Peggy Kelly
Santa Paula News
Three defendants were sentenced to long prison sentences last week for conspiring to kill a veteran prosecutor in 2004, a case that had ties to Santa Paula.
On January 19, Superior Court Judge Charles Campbell sentenced each defendant to 25 years to life for conspiring to kill Senior Deputy District Attorney Marc Leventhal.
Sandra Spencer, 44, a former Santa Paula resident, Gonzalo Mesa, 34, and Benny Figueroa, 35, all of Oak View, will serve their sentences after they finish doing time in the federal penitentiary. Mesa is serving 19 years and Figueroa 18 years for bank robberies, while Spencer is serving eight years for money laundering in connection with those robberies.
A Ventura County jury found the defendants guilty of the conspiracy against Leventhal in November, and Spencer guilty of solicitation for murder. Campbell stayed Spencer’s six-year prison sentence on the solicitation conviction.
Prosecutors said the three wanted Leventhal killed because he aggressively prosecuted Spencer’s husband, Anthony Navarro, who was convicted of real estate fraud and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Navarro, who also went by Spencer, had his bail raised by Leventhal before Navarro was convicted of real estate fraud and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
One of multiple charges against Navarro resulted from a 2003 transaction that involved a Santa Paula man who gave Navarro $435,000 to buy a Christmas tree farm, a purchase Navarro said he would arrange. Now 49, Navarro gave a guilty plea to two-dozen fraud charges in May 2004 and was sentenced to serve 15 years in prison for his crimes that prosecutors believed netted more than $2 million.
Navarro also operated a Santa Paula based company called Global Surplus Recovery Inc., and received more than $580,000 in foreclosure surplus money sent to him on behalf of dozens of mostly Latino working class clients, who received only about $100,000 of the proceeds.
The later plot to kill Leventhal ended because Mesa was arrested for bank robbery, and Figueroa for an unrelated crime.
Sandra Spencer earlier pleaded guilty to money laundering in connection with the January 2005 robbery of the Wells Fargo bank in Santa Paula, crimes allegedly committed to help fund the murder of Leventhal. Mesa and Figueroa were also involved in robberies that occurred from December 2004 to March 2005 at banks in Ventura, Camarillo, Thousand Oaks and Santa Paula.
