Press Release: People v. Braun, Christopher Allen, 1/28/11
January 28, 2011
R. Scott Owens
District Attorney
PLACER COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY
10810 Justice Center Drive, Suite 240
Roseville, California 95678
PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release
Date: January 28, 2011
Contact:
Art Campos
Public Information Officer
916-543-8076
Jeff Wilson
Assistant District Attorney
916-543-8000
MAN WHO “STALKED” VICTIMS AS HE SAT IN JAIL
GETS TWO YEARS AND EIGHT MONTHS IN PRISON
A former Florida resident who is described as a “con artist” by a Placer County prosecutor has been sent to state prison for a series of crimes, including one in which he had two female victims stalked while he was sitting in a jail cell.
While incarcerated in the Placer County jail, Christopher Allen Braun, 27, gave out the address and code numbers of a woman’s Granite Bay home so that his friends and former jail inmates could get into a gated community and defeat the home’s alarm system.
The unwanted visits by Braun’s friends have shaken the 51-year-old owner so badly that she is now trying to sell the house, said prosecutor Charlotte Baillie of the Placer County District Attorney’s Office.
The crimes came to light on January 12 when Braun pled no contest to felony charges of stalking and identity theft before Placer County Superior Court Judge Frances Kearney, who then sentenced him to two years and eight months in a state prison.
Braun also pled no contest to a misdemeanor charge of violating a restraining order, and he admitted that he had violated his felony probation.
The defendant was on probation and was serving a 300-day jail term in another case in which he had been convicted on three felony counts of theft.
Baillie said Braun came into the lives of three women last summer when he began dating one of the female victims, who was 27.
In August, the two moved into an apartment with an 85-year-old woman, and Braun paid the rent with a check in which he forged his girlfriend’s name without her knowledge.
A month later, Braun, who often posed as a military intelligence officer and wore military clothing to continue that ruse, and his girlfriend moved in with the girlfriend’s 51-year-old aunt, who lived in a gated community in Granite Bay.
After the girlfriend broke up with Braun, the women learned that Braun had used the aunt’s personal information in an attempt to obtain credit cards, Baillie said.
Braun was eventually convicted of the theft-related charges and was sent to jail. But while sitting behind bars, Braun told fellow inmates that he was rich and owned the Granite Bay home.
He gave them the secret code numbers to open the gates and deactivate the house alarm, telling the inmates and other friends they could stay at the house whenever they felt and that they could use the vehicles parked there.
His actions resulted in the felony charge of stalking, Baillie said.
The charge of identity theft was a result of Braun conning a fellow jail inmate into giving him personal information such as the inmate’s social security number, driver’s license number, birthdate and mother’s maiden name.
Baillie said Braun’s former girlfriend has since moved from the Granite Bay home and that the aunt, who is the true owner, is trying to sell the house because of the frightening and unwanted visits by the defendant’s friends.