Cloudy / 57° FIllegal immigrant sentenced for identity theft
Published 5:07pm Friday, August 6, 2010By AARON MUELLER
Niles Daily Star
CASSOPOLIS — If living in the United States illegally for 12 years wasn’t enough of a crime, Mexican citizen Leticia Sosa-Cepeda compounded her problems by committing identity theft in Cass County.
Sosa-Cepeda, who was living in Niles, faced her sentencing at Cass County Circuit Court Friday morning, and Judge Michael Dodge handed her a 180-day jail sentence with credit for 43 days served.
Sosa-Cepeda’s crime was discovered when officers with the Edwardsburg Police Department were investigating a suspected identity theft at Brothers Baking Co. in Edwardsburg.
When police questioned Sosa-Cepeda, she was unable to produce identification. She then gave officers a false name and birthdate twice. Both times there was no record of the name and birthdate.
When police threatened to arrest her for obstruction of justice, Sosa-Cepeda finally gave them her real name. It was then discovered that Sosa-Cepeda had been posing as a Maribel Rios with a false Social Security card that she had purchased on the streets of Chicago for $200.
When she was charged with this crime, she was on probation in Berrien County for welfare fraud. She had collected more than $18,000 in public assistance illegally.
Sosa-Cepeda’s son and daughter are to be deported soon, but she will be unable to be deported until she serves her sentence.
Defense attorney Christopher Vreeland argued Sosa-Cepeda’s crime was not as significant as many identity theft cases, as she didn’t steal any money from the victim.
“I deal with identity theft all the time,” Vreeland said. “This isn’t classic identity theft. This is where identification was purchased on the street. It causes the victim some inconvenience.”
Vreeland also argued Sosa-Cepeda is already facing “plenty of punishment” in being separated from her children and then being deported from the country.
In speaking through a translator, Sosa-Cepeda asked for a lenient sentence so she could be deported and join her children in Mexico.
Also on Friday, Niles resident Michael Jasper was sentenced to one year in jail on larceny in a building convictions. His sentence will run concurrently with a six-year sentence in Berrien County, where he also committed a spree of thefts.
I think she should have already been deported when she commited the first crime of welfare fraud. Now she is going to go to jail and the taxpayers will pay for that.