The Region - News from Oct. 22, 1985

After three years and 24 court continuances, a sentencing hearing began in Los Angeles County Superior Court for a Pasadena producer who had pleaded no contest in 1982 to six counts of security fraud in an investment scheme in which dozens of schoolteachers and retirees lost $1.3 million. Prosecution witnesses testified that George LeFave, who faces up to six years in state prison, failed to deliver promised returns of more than 30% on investments, including the TV distribution of an animated cartoon called “The Bear That Slept Through Christmas.” Defense counsel Howard L. Weitzman, who had requested most of the sentencing delays because of his work on such cases as the defense of auto maker John Z. DeLorean on drug-trafficking charges, said he will show that the losses were “blown out of proportion” and that LeFave should not be incarcerated because of “investments that went bad.”