Court wants FBI to examine the bank records of ex-Marpac GM

U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Alex R. Munson yesterday postponed again the sentencing of a former Marianas Pacific Distributors general manager who entered a guilty plea last year to charges he defrauded Marpac of $520,000.

After consulting with defense attorney Colin Thompson and assistant U.S. attorney Beverly McCallum during yesterday’s hearing, Munson continued the sentencing of Joseph Vincent Santos to Sept. 16, 2008, at 9am so that the Federal Bureau of Investigation could research the defendant’s bank records.

Munson said there are too many questions regarding Santos’ bank records that need to be clarified.

The judge ordered that Santos remain at liberty under the same terms and conditions as the court had previously set.

Santos pleaded guilty to mail fraud in September 2007.

Munson accepted Santos’s plea and set the sentencing for Dec. 11, 2007, then re-set it to Jan. 3, 2008.

On Jan. 3, 2008, the sentencing was re-set for Jan. 23, 2008, after the parties in the case agreed to postpone the hearing.

One reason cited at the Jan. 23 hearing for the continuance is that Santos’s counsel, Thompson, was scheduled to be off-island on the original Jan. 3 sentencing schedule. The prosecutor at the time was also leaving the island.

On Jan. 23, 2008, the court again re-set the sentencing to Feb. 26, 2008. Munson then stated he wants the U.S. Probation Office to locate the $500,000 that was previously in the bank accounts of Santos.

Munson directed the Probation Office to research when Santos’ bank accounts were closed and what the balance was at that time.

Munson requested the Probation Office to determine where the $500,000 is today, or if it was spent, how the money was spent, and the types of purchased items.

The judge stated that a determination should also be made as to where the $50,000 bond posted by the defendant at the CNMI Superior Court and the $10,000 property bond posted in the federal court came from.

Munson again re-set the sentencing to Feb. 26 then to June 2, then to June 23, and July 18.

The prosecution said that between January 2003 and in April 2006, Santos made a total $521,813.40 in unexplained cash deposits into four separate bank accounts.

Marpac is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ambros Inc., a corporation in Guam. As a franchisee of Anheuser-Busch, Marpac sells beer products to retail vendors on Saipan.

The prosecution said that between January 2003 and April 2006, the defendant “devised a scheme and artifice to defraud Marpac and obtain money and property by means of false and fraudulent pretenses, representations, and promises.”