Friday, February 29, 2008
Federal identity theft charges filed against suspect in fatal Minnesota school bus crash
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- Federal prosecutors filed identity theft charges Friday against a woman who was driving a van that crashed into a school bus in southwestern Minnesota, killing four students.
Olga Marino Franco del Cid, 24, of Minneota, had already been charged in state court with four counts of criminal vehicular homicide. The new charges accuse her of giving authorities a false name and Social Security number after the Feb. 19 crash near Cottonwood.
Franco's attorney, Manuel Guerrero, declined to comment on the new charges, saying he hadn't seen them. Franco did not immediately return a message left at the Lyon County jail in Marshall.
Right after the crash, Franco identified herself as Alianiss Nunez-Morales, but immigration investigators said they found the real Nunez-Morales in Connecticut. She told them her purse and identification documents were stolen more than six months ago in Puerto Rico, according to an ICE affidavit.
The affidavit alleges that Franco used Nunez-Morales' Social Security number to get a Minnesota identification card. She is accused of giving the number to two Minnesota companies where she worked.
When ICE agents searched her home in Minneota a week ago, they found a Guatemalan birth certificate, a certified Guatemalan ID card for Franco, correspondence to and from Guatemala in the name of her parents, and receipts showing money transfers to her mother in Guatemala, the U.S. attorney's office said in a news release.
Authorities earlier said Franco is in the United States illegally. She is allegedly not licensed to drive in Minnesota.
Franco was charged with two counts of aggravated identity theft and two counts of false representation of a Social Security number. Prosecutors filed the same federal charges against Franco's live-in boyfriend, Francisco Sangabriel-Mendoza, 29, who prosecutors say was the registered owner of the van. He has not been arrested, and authorities are seeking him.
He is accused of using the Social Security number of a Puerto Rican man to get work at two Minnesota companies. An ICE affidavit alleges he is a Mexican in the U.S. illegally.
Both Franco and Sangabriel-Mendoza face maximum potential penalties of five years in prison on each false representation count and two years on each identity theft count. Each of the vehicular homicide charges Franco faces carries a maximum 10-year sentence.
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
