By Mike Harris Monday, July 21st, 2025

Prosecuting white-collar crimes is a priority for Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko.

As is, of course, prosecuting violent offenses.

Nasarenko sees similarities between the two.

“Whether somebody is mugged on the street or mugged online, there is a severe financial loss,” Nasarenko told the Business Times June 11.

“There is psychological and emotional trauma, and there’s a crime that’s been committed,” he said. “So, it is taken extremely seriously by our office, and there are victims who desire prosecution and who want to be made whole.”

Nasarenko’s office has a special prosecutions division which encompasses various white-collar crime units.

They include auto insurance fraud, consumer and environmental protection, high-tech computer crimes, major fraud, real estate fraud, and workers’ compensation fraud.

“We are seeing, unfortunately, an acceleration of what we call electronic-based fraud,” Nasarenko said.

His consumer protection unit has collected over $3 million in penalties and costs since January 2022. 

The high-tech crimes unit has secured restitution orders in embezzlement cases approaching $9 million in that same period.

The real estate fraud unit, meanwhile, has secured more than $500,000 in restitution orders since the start of 2022. 

An additional $272,500 in restitution has been collected and distributed to victims of real estate fraud.

Nasarenko said his office can proceed either civilly or criminally in white-collar cases depending on the offense.

“Embezzlement, white-collar crime, oftentimes we proceed criminally,” he said.

But other white-collar cases, such as companies who engage in false advertising, are handled civilly, he said.

“By imposing a financial penalty on corporations and businesses who aren’t playing by the rules, we want to incentivize them to correct that behavior,” Nasarenko said.

“And sometimes taking a loss financially will do that,” he said.

Successful white-collar prosecutions this year include a former Thousand Oaks resident, George Ronald Russell, being sentenced to four years in state prison for a $1.1 million investment scheme.

Russell was also ordered to make restitution to his victims.

“Mr. Russell did not just steal money, he destroyed victims’ health, relationships, and trust in others,” Senior Deputy District Attorney Howard Wise, who prosecuted the case, said in a press release.

Also this year, Paramount-based Advanced Industrial Services agreed to pay nearly $30,000 for a 150-gallon spill of petroleum-contained wastewater into Grimes Canyon Creek near Fillmore.

In July 2023, PetSmart entered a stipulated judgment to pay $1.46 million to settle a civil complaint alleging that it engaged in false advertising and acts of unfair competition.

Also in 2023, Taco Bell Corporation entered a stipulated judgment to pay $85,500 for allegedly violating California’s gift card law. 

The two 2023 cases were filed on behalf of Nasarenko’s office and other district attorneys in the state.

Nasarenko, 55, who has been a prosecutor with the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office since 2008, was appointed to the top slot by the county board of supervisors in January 2021.

He succeeded long-standing DA Greg Totten, who left to become CEO of the California District Attorneys Association.

Nasarenko was elected to a six-year term as district attorney in June 2022.

His annual compensation is $333,512.

He intends to seek re-election in 2028.

Overlapping his time in the DA’s office, Nasarenko served on the Ventura City Council from 2013 to January 2021, including stints as mayor and deputy mayor.

There was no legal conflict of interest for him to be on the council at the same time he was with the prosecutor’s office, he said.

Nasarenko relinquished his council seat when he was appointed district attorney. 

Born in Santa Monica and raised in the San Fernando Valley, Nasarenko earned a B.A. in American history from UC Irvine in 1992.

He said the spark to become a prosecutor was lit while, as an undergrad, he read Manson Family prosecutor Vince Bugliosi’s book, Helter Skelter, about the cult’s murder spree.

“And from that point forward, I wanted to be a prosecutor,” Nasarenko said.

“It just spoke to my DNA, which is competitive, somebody who enjoys a high-stakes environment, and also who believes deeply in offender accountability,” he said.

But it was a decade before he enrolled in law school.

While still at UC Irvine, Nasarenko applied to some of the top law schools in the country but wasn’t accepted.

A friend advised him to get some real-world job experience and then re-apply.

He took his friend’s advice, serving as a legislative aide for the late congressman Anthony Beilenson, then deputy to the Los Angeles Unified School District board president and other public sector positions.

Nasarenko was accepted by Loyola Law School in Los Angeles in 2002, earning his law degree in 2006.

As district attorney, Nasarenko oversees an office with 112 prosecutors, 58 investigators and victim advocates as well.

His office’s current annual budget is $71.4 million.

“It’s a great job,” Nasarenko said. “A complex job. 

“Every year we receive approximately 25,000 cases from law enforcement agencies for criminal filing considerations,” he said. “Everything from misdemeanor trespass to murder.”

It’s a heavy volume that his prosecutors have to sift through, understand and then make filing decisions on, he said.

Nasarenko believes a centrist prosecutorial approach is the strongest.

“I believe that the job of the prosecutor is to be fair, practical, and ethical, and non-ideological,” he said.

His office’s core mission is to look at facts, gather evidence and file criminal charges, Nasarenko said.

But that’s not the only pathway available in handling cases, he said.

“We also have to be broad-minded and consider mental health diversion and prior records of offenders to make sure that whatever we recommend to the court and to the defense counsel is fair and just and based upon the facts before us,” he said.

Nasarenko is married with two teenage children and lives in Ventura.

In his downtime, he indulges his favorite passion.

“Soccer and more soccer and when I don’t have time for those two, soccer again,” he said with a laugh.

Nasarenko played on UC Irvine’s Division I intercollegiate team and still plays in an adult league in Thousand Oaks.

“Soccer really has kind of been a foundation point of my life,” he said.

“It taught me the value of teamwork, the necessity for discipline, and also how to strive toward victory in a collegial and ethical way,” Nasarenko said.

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