An Orange County lawyer agreed in court papers filed today to plead guilty to two felony charges related to a scheme in which he took more than $2 million awarded to employees of a company he sued in a class action and lost almost all of the funds while day trading in the stock market.

Sandeep Baweja, 39, of Irvine, was named in a criminal information filed late yesterday in United States District Court in Los Angeles. The information charges Baweja with one count of wire fraud and one count of obstruction of justice. Today, prosecutors filed a plea agreement in which Baweja agreed to plead guilty to the two charges, which carry a statutory maximum penalty of 30 years in federal prison.
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The former president of Service Employees International Union, Local 660, has agreed to plead guilty to federal charges in a scheme that defrauded a non-profit organization formed by another labor leader through the use of bogus consulting contracts.

In a plea agreement filed this afternoon in United States District Court in Los Angeles, Alejandro Stephens, 65, a resident of the Koreatown District of Los Angeles, agreed to plead guilty to two counts of mail fraud and one count of filing a false federal income tax return.

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