Scammer
Banned
Eight former or current officials of Bell, California, who have been accused of stealing city funds, are scheduled to be arraigned Thursday.
The original arraignment had been scheduled for September, but was postponed after a defense attorney asked for more time.
The officials are accused of misappropriating more than $5.5 million, including being paid for phantom meetings, authorities have said.
One of the accused officials is former City Manager Robert Rizzo, who was making nearly $800,000 annually.
He is charged with 53 counts of misappropriation of public funds and conflict of interest. Among the allegations are that he wrote his own employment contracts and that they were never approved by the city council, and gave out nearly 1.9 million in unauthorized loans to himself and other city officials, prosecutors said.
Rizzo and several other city officials resigned after media reports disclosed their salaries.
Bell, in southeast Los Angeles County, had 36,624 residents as of the 2000 census. The median annual income is less than $35,000.