Ignoring the ex-Sandia National Laboratories employee’s plea for probation, a federal judge in New Mexico sentenced Joshua Cordova to nearly two years in prison for the four counts of fraud to which he admitted earlier this year.
Cordova worked at the Albuquerque-based labs network from 2011 to 2019, instructing military and law enforcement personnel how to use equipment developed for antiterrorism applications. He admitted to racking up more than $130,000 in fraudulent charges on his company credit card in 2017 and 2018, purchasing items such as jewelry, golf clubs and hardware that he falsely reported to Sandia’s management and operations contractor as work-related items.
After dickering over his sentencing guidelines during the summer and fall, essentially by disputing the upper bounds of the government’s estimated tally of his theft, Cordova last week accepted responsibility for a total of $136,107.26.
Cordova had sought five years’ probation in lieu of prison time but now will spend 21 months behind bars, after which he will have a supervised release period of more than three years. He will also have to pay the government back every penny that he stole, according to the sentencing minute sheet filed with the court on Thursday.
Cordova must turn himself in to the district’s U.S. Marshal 60 days after the sentencing — by early February.
