Angry over drug sentence, inmate filed false $5.8M debt claim against federal judge, feds say
Unhappy with his 11-year sentence over two drug cases, a convicted marijuana smuggler found a way to get back at the judge who imposed it, authorities say.
While still imprisoned, Leandro Cardenas Luna, now 58, managed to file an involuntary bankruptcy petition in 2014 against U.S. District Judge Alia Moses, falsely claiming that the judge owed him a $5.8 million debt, the government contends.
As a result, Luna is now charged with bankruptcy fraud and mail fraud, facing as much as 30 more years in prison if he is convicted, reports the San Antonio Express-News.
Federal prosecutors and the FBI say Luna tricked a stepson into helping him mailing his involuntary petition against Moses to the federal bankruptcy court in San Antonio, which accepted it. However, there is no judgment against Moses, said assistant U.S. attorney Mark Roomberg at a Tuesday hearing.
Assistant federal public defender Molly Roth is representing Luna. She sought, with some success, to limit the language in the indictment against her client, calling information about his prior sentence and alleged motive “inflammatory and prejudicial,” the newspaper reports.
Roomberg argued that the disputed information “is highly relevant and not inflammatory,” showing that Luna “didn’t just pick someone at random. He went after the judge who put him in jail.”
U.S. District Judge Nancy Atlas, who was brought in from another jurisdiction to oversee the case, said case numbers and Luna’s prior sentence should be removed. However, “I’m not preventing you from explaining that she’s the judge who sentenced him,” Atlas told Roomberg.
