Lenny Dykstra mug shot
Dykstra is charged with three counts of grand theft auto, five counts of attempted grand theft auto, eight counts of filing false financial statements, plus four counts of identity theft.
The financial charges relate to the car theft charges, as Dykstra is accused of having faked financial records for a fictional business to get a credit line that would allow him and his co-defendants to lease luxury cars.
Two other men, Robert Hymers and Christopher Gavanis, are also charged in the car scam.
Should Dykstra be convicted, he'll face up to 12 years in prison. You'd think a guy with nicknames like "Nails" and "Dude," not to mention the skills of a pro baseball player, would be able to think up more creative and legal way to get himself into a nice car. But you'd be wrong, espeically in the case of Lenny Dykstra.
It seems Dykstra has a bit of a history of car-related trouble: in 1991, he crashed his Mercedes-Benz SL500 into a tree while drunk, breaking several bones. More recently, Dykstra has fallen onto hard times after a 2008 venture to start a private charter jet company failed, his $17.5-million house was foreclosed on in 2009, and he filed for bankruptcy that same year. Already this year Dykstra has been hit with accusations of sexual assault by his housekeeper, though no charges have been filed, and with federal charges for embezzling money from a bankruptcy estate.
[ABC6]
