Last defendant in ‘gay grifters’ case gets life without parole  

The final defendant in the infamous “gay grifters” murder case was sentenced Friday to life without the possibility of parole. Disbarred gay San Francisco attorney David Replogle whispered quietly to his attorney Peter Morreale as Riverside County Superior Court Judge Anthony R. Villalobos imposed the expected sentence.

Before the July 18 sentencing, the judge heard Replogle’s requests for a new trial but denied the motions. Replogle maintained his innocence throughout his two trials and said that he acted under duress.

Replogle, 76, was convicted of conspiring to murder Palm Springs retiree Clifford Lambert, 74, in 2008. Prosecutors say he was involved in the conspiracy along with four other Bay Area men to kill Lambert in an effort to steal his property and the deed to his home. Lambert was stabbed to death in his kitchen.

Lambert’s remains were found in northern Los Angeles County in 2016 and 2017 but weren’t identified until 2020.

In an exclusive interview with the Bay Area Reporter in May, Replogle maintained his innocence and said he would have more to say about the case sometime after his sentencing.

"This is right out of Putin's Russia, and you can quote me on that," Replogle said at the time, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin and comparing that to his treatment by the legal system in Riverside County.

Another man convicted in the murder, Miguel Bustamante, who identifies as bisexual, told the B.A.R. in an exclusive interview from state prison earlier this month that he believes that Replogle acted under threat from his co-defendant Kaushal Niroula. He said Niroula once showed him a photo of Replogle’s mother and implied to Bustamante that he threatened to harm Replogle’s mother if he didn’t cooperate with him. Niroula was murdered by a cellmate in 2022.

Prosecutors alleged that Replogle, Bustamante, Niroula, Daniel Garcia, and Craig McCarthy were involved in the conspiracy to kill Lambert. McCarthy avoided a life sentence by pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter and testifying against the other men. He will be eligible for parole next year.

Garcia, who is gay, was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole in April. Bustamante received the same sentence earlier.

McCarthy told police that he and Bustamante were surreptitiously let into Lambert’s home by Niroula, who was meeting with Lambert in his home. Niroula was pretending to be a lawyer who was arranging an inheritance for Lambert. Lambert heard noises in his kitchen and confronted the men there. Bustamante then stabbed Lambert to death, McCarthy said.

 
McCarthy has since recanted his testimony. In the recently released podcast, “American Hustlers,” he told producer Kim Kantner that he wasn’t in Lambert’s house when he was killed. In a 2021 declaration seeking to have his manslaughter conviction overturned that Bustamante's wife forwarded to the B.A.R., McCarthy wrote that there were “inconsistencies in my details because the cops fed me bullshit to say. I made up a lot just to be left alone.”

Investigators combed through about 32,000 text messages between the defendants that implicated them in the conspiracy. In an exclusive interview with the B.A.R. in February, Garcia said the texts that implicated him in the murder were falsified. Bustamante told the B.A.R. that he wasn’t in possession of the phone when prosecutors said he received texts from Niroula implicating him in the murder. He said he was not in Lambert’s house when he was murdered.

Senior Deputy District Attorney Lisa DiMaria was in attendance for Friday’s sentencing. She tirelessly investigated and tried the defendants during the first trial in 2012. She won convictions but those were thrown out in 2018 because of judicial misconduct. Garcia’s laptop recorded the judge in the case saying to his clerk in what he thought was a private conversation that he didn’t want to open envelopes from Niroula because he was HIV-positive.

Outside court, DiMaria told the B.A.R., “It is one of the most unusual cases in California history. The number of defendants, and largely the amount of resources spent on this case, really rivals no other case.”

Morreale, Replogle’s attorney, left without speaking to reporters. 

Niroula, Replogle, and Garcia were dubbed the “gay grifters” because of a number of cons they were alleged to have orchestrated in the Bay Area. Niroula was called the “Dark Prince.” He was born in Nepal and falsely claimed to be Nepalese royalty.

He helped contribute to the closing of New College in San Francisco in 2008. He was given a student visa by the college and had promised the school a $1 million donation. That donation never happened, and the school closed due to financial issues. He also was accused of swindling a Japanese woman he met in Hawaii out of more than a million dollars, and prosecutors say he was involved in a con to steal three condominium units at the One Rincon Tower building in San Francisco.