Feb. 01--Jose Lantigua, the Jacksonville businessman who faked his death in Venezuela to escape money problems, was sentenced Wednesday to 14 years in prison for crimes ranging from bank fraud to identity theft.
His estranged wife, Daphne Simpson, was placed on probation for five years for conspiring to help convince the world the former owner of Circle K Furniture was dead.
Federal sentencing guidelines suggested about seven years behind bars for Lantigua, 63, whose family tried to collect on $6.6 million worth of life insurance coverage he had pieced together over years.
But U.S. District Judge Timothy Corrigan said the "perniciousness and callousness" of the deception justified the longer term.
"Brazen does not even begin to describe it," he said of the scam.
Lantigua disappeared during a 2013 trip to South America for fictitious treatments for Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, a fatal brain affliction also called mad cow disease.
Two years later, federal agents stopped him and Simpson on a North Carolina road near the mountain community where Lantigua was living under another man's name in a house Simpson owned.
A plea agreement that prosecutors and Simpson signed last year said she helped Lantigua fake his death because he told her their families were in danger.
Lantigua, who met Simpson in 2011, told her throughout their relationship that he had once led an Army Special Operations team.
The whole story was a lie, the plea agreement said, but in 2013 he told Simpson he was being hunted by a drug cartel whose leader was killed by his team years earlier, and that faking his death would protect everyone involved.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Devereaux told Corrigan last year that Simpson, 58, had been "hoodwinked" into joining her husband's scam.
Lenders who had been fleeced contended Simpson was a key player, but Corrigan said he believed she was more victim than perpetrator.
The fact that prosecutors were convinced by Simpson after extensive interviews was a factor in the decision to order probation, Corrigan said, but added he still wanted her watched closely.
Simpson's attorney suggested sentencing her to time already served in the Duval County jail, but Corrigan said he decided instead on probation because that could legally last five years, instead of the three years he could order as supervised release after being incarcerated.
She'll be on home detention for six months and won't be able to take on credit without having it cleared in advance, said Corrigan. He said Simpson wouldn't be allowed to move to family members' home in California as she had hoped without court approval and had to continue cooperating with her creditors' attorneys as they looked for hidden assets.
The judge said Wednesday that any money either spouse made selling their story had to be automatically used to repay the victims.
Lantigua agreed last year to forfeit about $2.9 million and Simpson's plea involved forfeiting $871,000. But both said all their money was already gone, and Devereaux told the judge he didn't think there was a stash of money secreted somewhere that could be recovered.
Steve Patterson: (904) 359-4263
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