Ugly Police Mugshot of the Week pinup girl Rosa Carrasco and her husband Santiago Carrasco were sentenced Tuesday to two years in custody to be followed by two years of mandatory supervision for stealing more than $413,000 in benefits over seven years after faking Santiago's death.
The Santa Ana couple must also come up with $413,000 in restitution.
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They pleaded guilty to the scheme that began over the summer of 2004, when the now-52-year-old husband traveled to Mexico to bribe authorities into issuing a death certificate for his alias, Lucio Rodriguez. With documents in hand that showed “Lucio” had died of a heart attack, Santiago returned to the U.S. to live under his real name.
Beginning in September 2004, the now-54-year-old wife collected
financial death benefits, taking $413,000 in all by the time the Orange County Sheriff's Department and U.S. Social Security Administration received information the death was faked. The couple was arrested in August
2011.
Rosa, who worked in a retail store at South Coast Plaza,
and Santiago, a Fontana-based truck driver, accepted a court offer by copping to two felony counts of grand theft
with sentencing enhancements for aggravated white collar crime over
$100,000 and property loss over $200,000.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.