California couple sentenced for stolen treasury warrants

OMAHA -- U.S. District Judge Joseph F. Bataillon on Jan. 17 sentenced a California couple arrested in Cambridge last summer after they attempted to pass stolen U.S. Treasury warrants.

U.S. Attorney Mike Heavican announced Jan. 18 that Maria Lagunas, 28, was sentenced to time served (five months and 21 days) and Michael Munoz, 27, both of Santa Ana, Calif., was sentenced to six months, for their involvement in a conspiracy to forge endorsements on U.S. Treasury checks. After their releases, each will begin three-year terms of supervised probation and each will be required to pay $6,298.30 restitution.

The crime carried a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment and/or a $250,000 fine, and three-year supervised release.

Heavican reports that before July 2005, a number of Treasury warrants issued as 2004 income tax refunds were stolen from a Los Angeles post office. Munoz and Lagunas and two other individuals traveled from California to central Nebraska where they passed or attempted to pass the warrants in Campbell, Superior, Franklin, Orleans, Alma, Holbrook, Oxford, Beaver City, Arapahoe and Cambridge.

Others charged in the same scheme were Jose Luis Hernandez-Gomez and Ana E. Bell-Rodriguez. Heavican did not release any information on the disposition of charges against Hernandez-Gomez and Bell-Rodriguez.

The four were arrested in Cambridge on July 21, 2005, when a search of a van by a Furnas County deputy recovered 14 Treasury warrants and false California driver's licenses to match the names on the warrants.

The arrests and the vehicle stop came after the Furnas County sheriff's department received a warning about a Hispanic male and female trying to cash fraudulent checks at banks in Southwest Nebraska. The two were seen in a white van, which officers boxed in as it tried to leave the Cambridge Supermarket at about 3:30 p.m., July 21. Along with the Treasury notes and false identifications, officers found methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia.

A fifth suspect arrested in Cambridge was not charged in the conspiracy.

Suspects successfully cashed warrants totaling $6,298.30. The value of the recovered checks totaled more than $30,000.

Lagunas and Munoz have been held in custody since their arrests.