Almost two years after she was indicted for misusing tens of thousands of dollars while working as a real estate agent, Juneau woman Rosalinda Ainza, 35, was found guilty of theft in November and sentenced in late January.
Juneau Superior Court Judge Louis Menendez sentenced Ainza to 90 days in jail and five years probation at her sentencing hearing Jan. 25. Going into her November trial, Ainza was facing charges of theft and forgery, but the jury acquitted her on the forgery charge.
Menendez also issued a suspended imposition of sentence, meaning that if Ainza serves her time and completes her probation without any violations the felony conviction will be taken off her record.
“You have a chance to try to begin life again,” Menendez told Ainza at the Jan. 25 hearing.
It’s unclear exactly how much Ainza will have to pay back. Ainza was originally indicted for misusing more than $27,000 as a real estate agent for Coldwell Banker Race Realty (also known as Race Realty), but Menendez said during sentencing that one exhibit in the case estimated the amount to be around $31,000. Ainza said in court that she was confident that she would be able to pay the money back.
Ainza resigned from Coldwell Banker Race Realty in June 2015 after several years of being a real estate agent there. According to court records, Ainza’s resignation letter stated that she had made errors in judgment, including the misuse of the company’s money.
Coldwell Banker Race Realty then reviewed company records and called the police two days after Ainza’s resignation. On Sept. 24, 2015, Ainza was charged with theft and forgery. Ainza stated to police at the time that she intended to pay the money back and even had kept records of money she owed.
She repeated that sentiment at the Jan. 25 sentencing hearing.
“I allowed the pressure of a competitive industry to undermine my business practices,” Ainza said, “and that’s nobody’s fault but my own.”
Menendez said he didn’t believe Ainza was fully remorseful for the crime, but justified his issuing of the SIS because Ainza is fairly young and seems to have a decent chance at rehabilitation. More than a dozen community members wrote letters of support for Ainza, testifying to her merits and expressing faith that this was an isolated incident. Ainza has no previous criminal convictions, which was also a factor.
Mike Race, the realty group’s owner, said the loss of this money affected his business and his family’s life. At the sentencing, Race asked Menendez to come down hard on Ainza not for his sake but for the sake of setting an example for the rest of Alaska’s real estate community.
“This will be referred to and its consequences will go before the licensees, approximately 2,000 in the state, as what happens when you violate the public trust that we as professionals have sworn to uphold,” Race said.
Assistant District Attorney Amy Paige asked for a stricter sentence as well. Paige pointed out that paying for housing in Juneau is hard enough without real estate agents taking renters’ money for their personal use.
Paige reflected back on her own experience paying a high price for a home on North Douglas earlier in her time living in town.
“If I knew that that $2,100 that I paid for that place would be going to Ms. Ainza’s personal account so she could go to Coachella, I would be incredibly angry,” Paige said.
Ainza’s defense attorney Nick Polasky wanted it known that Ainza was indeed remorseful for her crime, and that it was a situation of a bad decision leading to more and more bad decisions.
Polasky applied for a brief delay to Ainza beginning her sentence so she could acquire an ankle monitor. According to court documents, Ainza withdrew from classes she was taking at the University of Alaska Southeast and made a request to the court on Jan. 31 that she be taken into custody. As of Feb. 2, online court records did not say she was in custody.
Mark De Simone murder trial moved to April
Once again, the trial has been pushed back for a former Arizona lawmaker accused of the May 2016 murder of Juneau man Duilio Antonio “Tony” Rosales.
Mark Anthony De Simone, 55, had a trial date scheduled for early January, which was then delayed to late January. Now, the trial is scheduled to begin April 23, according to online court records.
The trial has been postponed several times after initially being set for August 2016. DNA evidence was cited in one of the delays, and De Simone also switched his defense to public defender Deborah Macaulay recently.
On the night of May 15, 2016, Alaska State Troopers found Rosales, 34, at a private cabin in Excursion Inlet, with two bullet holes in the back of his head. Rosales and De Simone were on a hunting trip along with a few others, and according to an affidavit filed in the case, De Simone admitted to multiple members of the hunting party that he was the one who shot Rosales.
Rosales had been working in Juneau for five years and worked at The Jewel Box downtown. De Simone served as a state legislator in Arizona after living in Juneau from 1981 to 1988. According to reports at the time, De Simone had moved back to Juneau shortly before the hunting trip in May 2016.
Transit center murder trial moved to May
A Juneau man accused of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide is scheduled to head to trial May 21, according to online court records. David Valentine Evenson, 51, was arrested in July 2017 in connection with the June 30 death of Juneau man Aaron G. Monette. Evenson’s trial was set for Feb. 5 until it was reset.
During a fight at the downtown transit center on the night of June 30, Evenson allegedly punched and kicked Monette, 56, who later died in a Seattle hospital. Surveillance videos reportedly showed Evenson punching and kicking Monette, and Evenson turned himself in on July 7.
A Seattle pathologist found that Monette had a pre-existing aneurysm that burst due to trauma from the fight, and that the aneurysm was a contributing factor to Monette’s death.
• Contact reporter Alex McCarthy at 523-2271 or alex.mccarthy@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @akmccarthy.
