A Puerto Rican legislator and her husband were convicted by a federal jury on Friday for engaging in a years-long theft, bribery, and kickback conspiracy scheme.
Documents presented by prosecutors in court showed from early 2017 until July 2020, Legislator María Milagros Charbonier-Laureano, also known as Tata, along with her husband, Orlando Montes-Rivera, and her assistant, Frances Acevedo-Ceballos, executed a scheme to defraud the Puerto Rican Government.
Prosecutors showed Charbonier-Laureano inflated Acevedo-Ceballos’s salary from $800 on a bi-weekly, after-tax basis to nearly $2,900.
“Out of every inflated paycheck, it was agreed that Acevedo-Ceballos would keep a portion, and kick back between $1,000 and $1,500 to Charbonier-Laureano and Montes-Rivera,” the US Attorney for Puerto Rico, William Stephen Muldrow, said in a statement after the conviction.
Muldrow said when Charbonier-Laureano heard investigators were on her tail, she proceeded to delete evidence such as messages from her WhatsApp and iMessage and the cellphone’s call log.
The jury convicted Charbonier-Laureano and Montes-Rivera of one count of conspiracy; two counts of theft, bribery, and kickbacks concerning programs receiving federal funds; six counts of honest services wire fraud; and two counts of money laundering.
The jury also convicted Charbonier-Laureano of obstruction of justice for destroying data on her cell phone.
Charbonier-Laureano and Montes-Rivera are scheduled to be sentenced on April 10 and face a maximum penalty of five years in prison on the conspiracy count; a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison on each federal funds theft, bribery, and kickbacks count; a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on each honest services wire fraud count; and a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on each money laundering count.
Charbonier-Laureano also faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on the obstruction of justice count.
Acevedo-Ceballos pleaded guilty on November 7 to federal funds bribery and is scheduled to be sentenced on February 5, 2024.
