Previous Story
Judge orders detention of ex-CRM official Pangelinan
|
Posted on Nov 08 2011
U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona granted yesterday the U.S. government’s motion to detain former Coastal Resources Management official Benny K. Pangelinan pending a revocation hearing of his supervised release.
Manglona set the revocation hearing for Nov. 28, 2011.
The U.S. Probation Office has filed a petition to revoke Pangelinan’s supervised release after he allegedly violated his probation conditions.
At yesterday’s hearing, Pangelinan appeared with court-appointed counsel, Joseph N. Camacho. Assistant U.S. attorney Garth Backe appeared for the U.S. government.
Manglona said that Pangelinan would be appointed a new counsel. Camacho had moved to withdraw from the case and had asked that attorney Michael Evangelista be named to represent Pangelinan.
Backe asked the court for Pangelinan to be detained pending his Nov. 28 revocation hearing, calling to the witness stand U.S. Probation Officer Gregory Arriola, who narrated how Pangelinan violated his supervised release conditions.
In the petition for revocation filed in September, Arriola said that Pangelinan borrowed $21,450 from a couple and received over $11,000 from a family member, with promises to pay them back with large amounts of interest.
He allegedly promised the couple that he will double the payback once he receives $9.9 million from a “Korean woman” who had $150 million to use for projects on Saipan. Pangelinan also allegedly convinced a family member that he has large sums of money being sent to Saipan from different sources.
Last Wednesday, Arriola filed a supplemental declaration that he caught Pangelinan sending money through wire to a person he claimed to be his Australian girlfriend whom he met on the Internet.
In January 2007, a federal jury found Pangelinan guilty of five wire fraud charges stemming from his activities to defraud potential investors and his involvement with various Internet fraud schemes.
He was sentenced to three years and one month in prison. After serving his sentence, he was placed on three years of supervised release.
The court had also ordered Pangelinan to pay a total of $129,250 in restitution to his five victims.
