Local News in Brief : Check Fraud Sentence

A Los Angeles businessman was sentenced Monday to three years in prison, five years probation and 2,000 hours of community service for cashing $1.4 million in worthless checks at four banks.

Defense attorney Rick Flam told Chief U.S. District Judge Manuel Real that his client, Peter Azer, 44, joined promoter John Ellsworth in the scheme because he needed the money to pay off debts from gambling and a failing wholesale fish business.

Ellsworth, 41, of Los Angeles, was sentenced last month to 4 1/2 years in prison after admitting that he wrote two of the bad checks totaling $61,000 on a Wilshire Center Bank account of his company, U.S. Coal Corp., headquartered in Minneapolis.

He had Azer cash the checks at Sanwa Bank California between January and March, 1987, and the two split the proceeds before the bank realized that the checks would bounce, Assistant U.S. Atty. Anita Dymant said. Azer also cashed nearly $1.34 million in bad checks at Security Pacific National Bank, California Overseas Bank and Wilshire State Bank.