United States Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner
Eastern District of California
Bakersfield Man Sentenced and Fresno Man Pleads Guilty in Two Document Fraud Cases
| FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | Monday, December 17, 2012 |
FRESNO, Calif. — Two defendants in two cases made appearances in court today, United States Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner announced.
Mexican national Aldo Cruz-Trujillo, 26, of Bakersfield, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Lawrence J. O’Neill to 10 months in prison for producing and selling fraudulent government identification documents. According to court documents, between November 2011 and February 2012, Cruz-Trujillo manufactured and sold to customers in Bakersfield false identification documents, including social security cards and alien registration cards.
(Docket #:1:12-CR-0126-LJO)
Marco Antonio Arias-Solis, 41, of Fresno, pleaded guilty today to conspiring with others to produce and sell false identification documents. He is the fourth of nine defendants charged earlier this year in this fraudulent document operation that operated in Fresno, Tulare and Madera Counties. (Docket #1:12-cr-130-AWI)
According to the plea agreement, between January 2012 and April 2012, Arias-Solis and his co-conspirators took customer orders for fraudulent documents, produced false identification documents and delivered and sold them to customers. They charged $90 to $124 for a set of documents that included a forged social security card and an alien registration card.
Arias-Solis is scheduled to be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Anthony W. Ishii on March 11, 2013. He faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The actual sentence, however, will be determined at the discretion of the court after consideration of any applicable statutory factors and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which take into account a number of variables.
These cases are the product of investigations by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). The Fresno County Sherriff’s Office Air Support Unit assisted in the Arias-Solis investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Baker prosecuted the cases.
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