CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – With his wife Marissa found by a US district court guilty only last Monday of dollar smuggling and conspiracy to hide deposits in US banks, Sen. Lito Lapid must long to immediately fly to the US to comfort her.
But not yet, his chief of staff Filmer Abrajano told Punto. The senator from Pampanga has opted to finish Senate sessions.
Asked whether Lapid had already flown or would immediately fly to Nevada, Abrajano replied: “There is still Senate session (for Lapid to attend).”
The Senate, however, is slated to adjourn on Feb. 9 to resume on June 5, after the May elections. Abrajano kept mum on making any further statements on the case.
Lapid and other members of his family, as well as his spokesperson Alex Marcelino could not be reached for comment. Their phones rang unanswered.
Mrs. Lapid has been wearing an electronic monitoring anklet and was told to limit her movements within Nevada. These requirements were imposed by US District Court Magistrate Judge Peggy A. Leen of Las Vegas after her arrest on Nov. 27, 2010 upon arriving at the McCarran International Airport.
The arrest was based on bulk smuggling of cash worth $40,000 and P10,000 earlier.
US law requires foreigners to declare at airports cash worth over $10,000 they are carrying. While Mrs. Lapid declared $10,000 cash she carried, officials at the airport found other cash in US currency hidden in socks in her luggage, for a total of $40,000, apart from the P10,000.
Last Monday, the US court sentenced her to three years of probation, including five months home confinement, a $40,000 fine, and a forfeiture of $159,700 for her guilty plea to cash smuggling and conspiracy to structure money transactions, state district court US Attorney Daniel Bogdon spokesperson Natalie Collins said in a statement.
Mrs. Lapid is likely to be deported after serving out her sentence in the US, as she is neither a US citizen nor an immigrant to the US.
She was charged with one-count cash bulk smuggling and one-count of conspiracy to structure transactions to evade bank reporting requirements.
The latter was based on the findings of the Nevada court that Mrs. Lapid also “knowingly and wilfully” conspired with other known and unknown persons to commit the crime of restructuring transactions with banks to evade US-government requirement for banks to report deposits worth more than $10,000 in one single transaction.
Structuring deposits involves separation of a single deposit into several deposits to avoid being included in currency transaction reports by US banks.
Such reports have been required since 1996 by the federal government and covers deposits worth the “reporting threshold” of $10,000 or above in a single transaction.
The indictment issued by Leen said Mrs. Lapid deposited $5,700 cash at a Las Vegas branch of J. P. Morgan Chase Bank, a domestic financial institution, into an account with the last four digits 2879, on or about Jan. 5, 2009.
Then on Jan. 7, 2009, she deposited another $5,700 cash into the same bank account.
Then on April 8, 2009, Mrs. Lapid deposited $9,000 cash at a Las Vegas branch of Bank of America into an account with the last four digits 3855, and then later another $9,000 cash at a Las Vegas branch of Wells Fargo Bank into an account with the last four digits 9952.
Sometime in May 11 in the same year, Mrs. Lapid deposited another $9,000 cash at the Las Vegas Bank of America into an account with the last four digits 3855 and yet another $9,000 cash at a Las Vegas Wells Fargo Bank with the last four digits 9952.
On May 18 also in 2009, Mrs. Lapid deposited $6,000 cash at Las Vegas Bank of America account with the last four digits 3855; $8,000 cash and $6,000 cash in Las Vegas JP Morgan into account with last four digits 2879 and in Las Vegas Welles Fargo Bank of America into account with last four digits 9952, respectively.
Then on July 20, 2009, she deposited $8,000 cash at Las Vegas JP Morgan Chase Bank into an account with last four digits 1562; the following day, she made another $9,000 cash deposit into the same bank account.
On Dec. 23, 2009, Mrs. Lapid deposited $5,000 cash at Bank of America into the account with four digits 3855 and another $5,000 more at Las Vegas JP Morgan Chase Bank with the account with last four digits 2879.
On June 7, 2010, Mrs. Lapid deposited $9,000 cash at JP Morgan Chase Bank at Las Vegas with last four digit 2879.
The court verdict forfeited all the “property, real or personal, involved in the offense, and any property traceable to such property,” including the $40,000 confiscated from her during her Nov. 2010 arrival, and the monies she deposited in her banks worth about $159,700.
