UPDATE: All three co-defendants were sentenced in December 2017 in U.S. District Court in Oregon after previously pleading guilty to one count each.
Brooke K. Phillips pleaded guilty to wire fraud and was sentenced to 22 months in federal prison and three years of supervised release.
Kenatis M. Alafanso pleaded guilty to misprision of a felony and was sentenced to two years of probation.
Larry Marc Lisua Tagabuel pleaded guilty to wire fraud and was sentenced to six months in federal prison.
Two Vancouver women and an Oregon man are facing charges in federal court for allegedly depositing counterfeit checks into their bank accounts representing more than $24,000 in tax rebates from the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.
Brooke K. Phillips, 39, and Kenatis M. Alafanso, 38, both of Vancouver, and Larry Marc Lisua Tagabuel, 27, of Clackamas were indicted earlier this month on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and 13 counts of wire fraud, according to a federal indictment issued in the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands.
It’s unclear when the alleged conspiracy began, but the scheme continued until about December 2015, court records say. Sometime in that year, Tagabuel received a tax rebate check from the commonwealth for the 2014 tax year. The check was mailed to Tagabuel in Oregon from Saipan, the largest of the Northern Mariana Islands.
The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands is made up of a 14-island chain located between Hawaii and the Philippines. It is a territory of the United States.
The indictment says that an unnamed co-conspirator then scanned a copy of the tax rebate check and used the image to create counterfeit checks from the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. Investigators believe that some of the profits were shared with this co-conspirator in exchange for producing the fraudulent checks.
All of the counterfeit checks had a legitimate routing number linked to the Bank of Guam and an account number assigned to the government of the Northern Mariana Islands, according to the indictment.
The checks were printed and made payable to Phillips, Alafanso and Tagabuel. The trio then opened individual checking accounts at various banks, including US Bank and Bank of America, and deposited the checks in them, according to court records.
After the funds were available in their accounts, they made large cash withdrawals from various ATM and branch locations in Portland and Vancouver, the indictment says.
Phillips, Alafanso and Tagabuel were arrested earlier this week and booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center on federal holds by the U.S. Marshals Service. Alafanso was released Thursday and was ordered to appear at a later court date.
