COUNTERFEIT DOCUMENT VENDOR SENTENCED

Ernesto Santillanes-Escoto, 52, will serve 16 months in federal prison for document fraud, U.S. Attorney Tom Moss announced. Santillanes-Escoto was sentenced this afternoon in Pocatello, Idaho, by Chief U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill. Santillanes-Escoto entered a guilty plea in February 2009 to four counts of document fraud.

Between March and July 2008, Special Agents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) Office of Investigations, and detectives from the Idaho Falls Police Department made multiple undercover purchases of counterfeit Permanent Resident cards and counterfeit Social Security Administration cards from Ernesto Santillanes-Escoto. Santillanes- Escoto, a citizen of Mexico, who was illegally and unlawfully in the United States, sold these counterfeit documents to various cooperating individuals in Idaho Falls and Blackfoot, Idaho.

Santillanes-Escoto was indicted by a federal grand jury in July 2008. He was arrested in Southern California in September 2008 and returned to Idaho to face the criminal charges. Upon his release from federal prison, Santillanes-Escoto will be placed in immigration removal proceedings.

“Cases such as this are very important in enforcing laws against illegal immigration,” Moss said.