A dispute about the magnitude of a former employee’s theft from Sandia National Laboratory prompted an assistant U.S. attorney to refuse a request from the defendant’s lawyers that the U.S. District court knock two months off the former lab hand’s potential jail sentence.
Joshua Cordova’s lawyers were seeking a 10-month sentence, on the basis that the former Sandia trainer had accepted responsibility for his crime: stealing what he admits was somewhere between $75,000 and $140,000 from the labs network in Albuquerque, N.M., by racking up credit card charges for personal items and passing them off as work purchases.
But the federal attorney prosecuting the case said the actual loss to the government could be at least $95,000, and that whether Cordova will admit it or not, he wouldn’t qualify for the shorter sentence his attorneys seek. If Cordova won’t admit to taking Sandia for $95,000, there would have to be an evidentiary hearing that would cost taxpayers money to carry out.
If the evidence at the hearing supports the government’s claim, the hearing would have wasted taxpayers’ time and money, disqualifying Cordova from further leniency, the assistant U.S. attorney wrote in a Sept. 14 objection to the case’s Presentence Investigation Report: a dossier for the sentencing judge provided by a probation officer.
But even if the evidence backed Cordova’s estimate, he wouldn’t qualify for the sentencing reduction his attorneys seek because of a technicality with the sentencing guidelines, which say the additional leniency the ex-Sandia hand wants would be available only if the severity of his alleged crimes — to which he admitted in a plea bargain in May — was greater.
At deadline, Cordova was scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 20 during a virtual hearing in the U.S. District Court for New Mexico. Judge Kea Riggs was to preside, according to the hearing notice filed Sept. 15.
This spring, Cordova admitted to abusing his Sandia company credit card by splurging on a wedding ring, golf clubs, video games and trips to the hardware store. The golf clubs cost more than the wedding ring, according to court documents.
