Former Orange County Assistant Sheriff Don Haidl was sentenced Monday to two years’ probation, a $40,000 fine and 200 hours of community service for tax fraud.
Haidl, a Newport Beach businessman and one-time assistant to convicted former Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona, was accused of tax fraud in a scheme to help pay his son’s legal bills in a sexual assault case. He was given probation rather than prison time because of his cooperation in the federal corruption case against Carona.
Haidl was accused by federal prosecutors of filing a false income tax return after his son, Gregory Haidl, was charged along with two friends of sexually assaulting an apparently unconscious 16-year-old girl and videotaping the incident. The elder Haidl pleaded guilty to tax fraud and agreed to cooperate in the government’s case against Carona in exchange for prosecutors’ recommendation of leniency.
Haidl became the government’s star witness in the case against Carona and at times wore a hidden microphone during conversations with the former sheriff.
Gregory Haidl was released from prison in 2008, after serving about three years of a six-year sentence on the sexual assault conviction.
Carona was acquitted in 2009 of all but one charge, witness tampering. He is appealing that conviction.
— Paloma Esquivel in Orange County