A parolee from a check-kiting scheme was charged Friday with leading police on a chase from Laguna Beach to Newport Beach, where it ended with him refusing to come out of his car in a 45-minute standoff.
Richard Scott Bloustine, 53, was charged with evading police and reckless driving and evading police while driving against traffic, both felony counts.
The chase started about 3 p.m. Wednesday in Laguna Beach when the suspect — reported to be armed with a gun — refused to yield in an attempted vehicle stop, Laguna Beach Police Department Sgt. Jim Cota said. He was wanted on a no-bail warrant, Cota said.
Bloustine pleaded guilty Feb. 4 to a misdemeanor count of disobeying a domestic relations court order and was sentenced to 60 days in jail and placed on three years of informal probation. He accepted a plea deal from Orange County Superior Court Judge Greg Jones, who made a plea deal with the defendant in the check-kiting scheme in 2016.
After Bloustine’s guilty plea in February, his mother, Debbie Logan, and her husband, Larry Logan, sent a letter written by her husband asking to be informed when Bloustine was released from custody.
“We are writing this letter in the hope we can make the court aware of how dangerous this man is,” Larry Logan wrote. “He has made harassing calls to Debbie Logan at her office and to both of us here at home.”
They said they have received up to 20 calls a day and that, “He has called the police on Larry Logan four times, asking to place me in jail for abuse of his mother. No actions were ever taken as the charge was bogus.”
Bloustine was on the phone with dispatchers from his Mercedes-Benz at some point during the chase, Cota said.
He eventually pulled into a parking lot at an office complex in Newport Beach at 1441 Avocado Ave. near Fashion Island and remained in the car with police monitoring him at gunpoint. He finally emerged from the car and surrendered about 5 p.m. Wednesday.
Bloustine was convicted in 2016 of writing bad checks totaling more than $200,000.
In 1996, he was convicted of credit card fraud in Hawaii, and three years later was found guilty of a fraud scheme in Arizona.
In 2004, he was convicted of grand theft, and in 2008, he was convicted again of grand theft and credit card fraud.
Both of those cases were in Santa Barbara County.