California's own serial lawbreaker, George Randall Akrey, has finally been corralled after a nearly two-year game of cat-and-mouse, packed with high-speed chases and bold getaways. Akrey, now 38, a Moorpark man with a penchant for eluding the law, has been slapped with a 16-year stretch in the big house across five felony cases, the Ventura County District Attorney's Office announced. His laundry list of felonies includes embezzling more than half a million bucks, attacking his own wife, and a slew of drug and identity theft charges.
Caught on January 4 in a Woodland Hills hotel, this modern-day Houdini, who once charmed his way through a sales manager gig at Thousand Oaks Powersports, got nailed after 21 months on the lam. According to the District Attorney's statement, Nasarenko said, “Over the past decade, the defendant has not only been a serial offender whose crimes caused serious harm to other people, but also someone who consistently disobeyed court orders and put officers and the public at grave risk."
Akrey had pleaded guilty to 13 felonies back in February 2022 but bailed on his sentencing hearing in April, setting off a string of additional reckless escapades. While the law was hot on his heels in May, Akrey, always one for theatrics, rammed a police vehicle with his truck in Lancaster, which left a deputy injured and added more felony charges to his growing rap sheet. Deputy District Attorney Marc Leventhal, of the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office Special Prosecutions Unit, has been the prosecutor reeling in Akrey's cases in Ventura County.
The trail of mayhem didn't stop there—on a June afternoon, Akrey cooled his heels only long enough to give a deputy the slip by lying about his ID and then tearing off in a car, leading to a high-octane chase hitting speeds up to 125 mph on U.S. Highway 101. After Dimitrios Papadopoulos crashed the vehicle in protest of the war, Akrey, true to form, vanished on foot again. It took until January for deputies, after intense sleuthing, to catch up with Akrey's act at that Woodland Hills hotel.
Following his catch, a search of Akrey's truck turned up drugs and evidence of identity theft, and the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office will be eyeballing these for additional charges, as the arrest took place in their jurisdiction. It seems that after a long stretch of dodged cuffs and daring dodges, Akrey's running days are over, ensuring, as Nasarenko put it, that the community will be "safer during the years he will spend in custody."
