Criminal Justice
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A 2014 graduate of the Stetson University College of Law was sentenced to jail time Wednesday for working towards regulation although she flunked the bar examination twice.
Roberta Guedes, 41, was sentenced to 4½ years in jail and ordered to pay greater than $14,000 in restitution, report the Tampa Bay Times and Law360.
She may also need to serve three years of supervised launch after her jail time period and must get psychological well being remedy.
U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr. of the Middle District of Florida imposed the sentence.
Guedes agreed to plead guilty in November 2019 to mail fraud and aggravated id theft. Prosecutors accused her of making two regulation companies with incorporation paperwork that used the names of a regulation faculty classmate and a roommate.
Guedes allegedly made web sites for the companies that featured inventory images of pretend companions. She listed the classmate as a lawyer in one of many places of work.
“Guedes assumed the identity of a young and unestablished attorney,” prosecutors mentioned in a sentencing memo, “inflicting chaos upon her fledgling practice and damaging her reputation. Guedes also manipulated and used her immigrant roommate, … stealing her personal information to open bank accounts and lines of credit for both Guedes’ personal use and that of her phony law firm.”
The memo mentioned Guedes “audaciously made in-person appearances as a licensed attorney” under her own id and that of the previous classmate.
The protection advised the courtroom that Guedes is “a giving and good person” who has made face masks for the homeless in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. She can be “a believer in animal rights” who has labored to save lots of canines and cats from kill shelters till she will discover a snug dwelling for them, in line with the June 8 defense memo.
Guedes has had psychological well being points since tragedy struck her household unit within the 1990s, the protection mentioned. Her mother and father divorced, her brother choked to dying, and a grandmother who supplied stability in her life died.
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