Aug. 03--The wife of a Jacksonville businessman who was falsely reported dead in Venezuela, then arrested in North Carolina, pleaded guilty Wednesday to conspiring to commit mail and wire fraud.
Federal prosecutors last month accused Daphne Simpson of working with Jose Lantigua, her husband, to make the 2013 story of his death believable and to file claims on life insurance policies worth millions of dollars. Lantigua owned Circle K Furniture in Jacksonville before his disappearance.
Simpson acknowledged her role at her arraignment Wednesday, quietly answering "yes, your honor" when U.S. Magistrate James R. Klindt asked: "Is that what you did?"
Simpson could be sentenced to as much as five years in prison and a $1.7 million, but prosecutors agreed to recommend a punishment "on the low end of the scale," Klindt said as he reviewed a stack of agreements that filled more than 25 pages.
A federal district judge still has to approve Simpson's plea, and will set her sentence at a date that hasn't been decided yet.
Simpson, 58, also faces a charge of giving false information to authorities who stopped a Jeep Lantigua was driving -- with her in the passenger seat -- near Asheville, N.C. in March 2015.
Prosecutors at one point also expected her to answer those charges Wednesday. But Klindt was told during the hearing that paperwork from North Carolina hadn't been sent yet, making it impossible to formally handle the matter.
Klindt scheduled a follow-up hearing Aug. 18 that will be the next step toward disposing of that case.
Before his arrest, Lantigua had been living under another man's name in a mountain home on the edge of the Appalachian mountains, using a bogus driver's license and passport that got him eventual convictions on passport fraud and identity theft.
Lantigua, 63, is still awaiting sentencing for those charges, but in January he was moved to the Baker County Jail as a federal prisoner while investigators picked through his exploits.
The charge against Simpson said the couple tried to cash in policies from seven life insurance companies, which state prosecutors earlier said would have been worth $9 million. A string of companies challenged the claims, and attorneys working with Simpson wage legal fights in state and federal courts over how much was really owed.
Part of Simpson's agreement with prosecutors calls for her to forfeit $871,000, an amount that included payments three of the companies made before Lantigua was arrested.
Steve Patterson: (904) 359-4263
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