Manager accused of aiding robbery

A drug store manager’s uncanny ability to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when crimes occur has finally caught up to her, Orange County Sheriff’s officials are saying.

Authorities are claiming Cynthia Johanna Ongamsing-Jenkins, 43, wasn’t exactly the victim of a take-over robbery at a Costa Mesa Rite Aid in 2007, or of a stick-up last month in Dana Point where robbers made off with $20,000. No, said Sheriffs department spokesman Jim Amormino, she, in fact, helped plan them.

Police are saying Ongamsing-Jenkins was the brains behind the Nov. 11, 2007, Rite Aid robbery in Costa Mesa where two men walked into the store carrying guns and ordered employees to the floor.

Costa Mesa police said that the men ordered the female employee to lock the front door before customers could walk in and they then locked the other employee in the store freezer.

The robbers emptied the cash registers and the store safe, making out with thousands of dollars, Amormino said.

Last month, Ongamsing-Jenkins called authorities to say she had just been robbed on her way to a Dana Point bank to deposit money from the Rite Aid next door, Amormino said.

She told police two men, fitting the description of the suspects from Costa Mesa robbery 18 months earlier, threatened her with a gun and forced her to hand over the deposit, officials said.

The men made off with about $20,000, Amormino said.

“During the interview, investigators became suspicious and filed conflicting statements. They confronted [Ongamsing-Jenkins] who admitted that the robbery had been faked and that she planned and executed the entire thing with an accomplice,” Amormino said. “During the questioning, she implicated herself in another robbery at another store in Costa Mesa.”

Amormino said Ongamsing-Jenkins has served prison time before after being convicted of soliciting someone for a murder-for-hire.

She is charged with several felonies, including grand theft and robbery.

She posted $100,000 bail and was released from Orange County Jail last week and is due back in court for her arraignment July 22.