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September 10, 2003
The United States Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California announced that Jeanette Lopez, 38, of Castro Valley, was indicted yesterday by a federal grand jury on 14 counts of wire fraud in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1343.
According to the indictment, Ms. Lopez is alleged to have defrauded her former employer, HMT Technology of Fremont, California, and HMT's transfer agent and stock issuer, Equiserve of Canton, Massachusetts, in order to steal over $324,000 worth of HMT stock. The indictment alleges that Ms. Lopez was employed as a stock plan administrator, and later stock plan supervisor, for HMT between 1997 and 1999. According to the indictment, during this period Ms. Lopez transferred over 32,500 shares of HMT stock to her personal brokerage account in 14 separate transactions.
The indictment alleges that Ms. Lopez accomplished the fraud by submitting fraudulent authorization letters to Equiserve. In the fraudulent letters (some of which contained forged signatures), Ms. Lopez represented that HMT employees had exercised stock options under the company's Stock Option Exercise Plan, and directed the transfer of blocks of shares of HMT stock to a holding account. The indictment further alleges that Ms. Lopez then had the stock transferred to her personal brokerage account, knowing that she had no entitlement to the shares. The indictment contains a count seeking forfeiture of $324,458, the total proceeds of the offense.
The maximum statutory penalty for each count in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1343 is 30 years in prison and a fine of $ 1 million, plus restitution. However, any sentence following conviction would be dictated by the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which take into account a number of factors, and would be imposed in the discretion of the Court. An indictment simply contains allegations against an individual and, as with all defendants, Ms. Lopez must be presumed innocent unless and until convicted.
Ms. Lopez is to make her initial appearance in federal court in Oakland on September 16, 2003 at 10:00 a.m. before Judge Wayne D. Brazil.
The prosecution is the result of an 18-month investigation by special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr. is the Assistant U.S. Attorney who is prosecuting the case with the assistance of legal secretary Jessica Chavez.
A copy of this press release may be found on the U.S. Attorney's Office's website at www.usdoj.gov/usao/can. Related court documents and information may be found on the District Court website at www.cand.uscourts.gov or on http://pacer.cand.uscourts/gov.
All press inquiries to the U.S. Attorney's Office should be directed to Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew J. Jacobs at (415)436-7181.
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