Plumber poisoned client with fentanyl, authorities say, then he went for his bank accounts

On Jan. 10, 2022, Bill Levy didn’t go outside to get the newspaper from the driveway of his townhouse in Granada Hills. The trash cans stayed out all morning. His neighbor got worried and called the police.

That afternoon, officers found Levy dead in his bed.

His doctor talked with someone from the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office, and they decided Levy had died of natural causes, officials from Ventura County said at a news conference on Wednesday.

Levy was 72 and had high blood pressure, which the doctors believed contributed to his cardiac arrest. There was no autopsy.

A little over two years later, investigators with the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office were looking into what seemed like an unrelated death: the shooting of Jose Antonio Velasquez of Camarillo, who went missing in July 2022 and whose body was found by hikers in the Santa Monica Mountains three months later.

Rotherie Foster was arrested in January 2023 and charged with Velasquez’s murder. Like Velasquez, Foster was a plumber in Camarillo, and police and prosecutors believe he killed Velasquez for money, using the man’s credit cards, bank account and checkbook after his death.

With Foster in jail on murder and theft charges, the prosecution’s investigators were digging into his bank accounts to gather evidence for the trial. They found “a number of suspicious, troubling and alarming transactions,” including bank transfers and a large check to Foster from a man named Bill Levy, Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko said during Wednesday’s news conference.

The money started moving from Levy’s account to Foster’s on Jan. 11, 2022, the day after Levy was found dead, Nasarenko said.

When investigators brought their findings to police and coroner’s officials in Los Angeles, they had Levy’s body exhumed and autopsied, Ventura County Sheriff Jim Fryhoff said. Levy’s actual cause of death was ruled to be fentanyl poisoning.

Foster worked for a large plumbing company and was sent to Levy’s home on multiple jobs, Nasarenko said. Prosecutors believe Foster killed Levy with fentanyl for the same reason they think he shot Velasquez: for access to his bank accounts.

This week, prosecutors added Levy’s killing and the related financial crimes to the list of charges against Foster, bringing the total to 33 felony charges. He is also charged in the July 2022 robbery of a convenience store in Fillmore.

Nasarenko said he and Fryhoff have about 50 years of law enforcement experience between them, and neither had ever seen a case like this one, with fentanyl as the apparent murder weapon and identity theft and bank fraud as the motive.

“This is, in my opinion, almost unprecedented,” Nasarenko said.

Foster has pleaded not guilty to the charges in Velasquez’s killing and has yet to enter a plea to the new charges.

Nasarenko said prosecutors have found evidence of financial crimes against other victims but no signs of additional violent crimes.

Foster, 38, already has two “strikes” against him for violent felonies. He has served state prison time for a manslaughter and assault he committed in the Sacramento area while he was a teenager. He was under 18 at the time but was tried as an adult, Nasarenko said.

Tony Biasotti is an investigative and watchdog reporter for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at tbiasotti@vcstar.com. This story was made possible by a grant from the Ventura County Community Foundation's Fund to Support Local Journalism.

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Authorities: California plumber poisoned, stole from client