Three People Charged With Stealing From Victoria’s Homeless

And the dirtbags of the year award goes to.....

Three people attempted to steal more than $6,000 from the Victoria Area Homeless Coalition. Sandra Rivera Ortigoza, 40; Joe Angel Ramirez, 51; and Silvano Ray Rodriguez Jr., 38, were indicted Thursday on one count of engaging in organized criminal activity and three counts of forgery of a financial instrument.

They are charged with forging checks supposedly from the Coalition. The checks were written on Nov. 23, 2013; Nov. 27, 2013; and Dec. 4, 2013.

The three were not known volunteers and are thought to have obtained the bank account number from someone who had received help from the charity in the past.

The Coalition regularly writes checks ranging from $25 to $50 to go toward helping the homeless obtain birth certificates, driver's licenses and IDs, which they need to apply for services such as housing.

The fraud was picked up on when the bank cashing the checks noticed the unusually large sum. Bear in mind the Coalition runs on about a $5,000/year budget. The Coalition's account was overdrafted, and because its checks kept bouncing, the city of Victoria stopped accepting them.

Ortigoza, who also goes by Sandra Ann DeLeon, has at least one prior engaging in organized criminal activity case in Victoria County. In 2008, she was charged with working with four other people to steal from Crossroads Mechanical Inc., 1508 N. Ben Jordan St. In that case, she was charged with writing a fraudulent check as the business, too, according to court records.
She pleaded guilty in exchange for 10 years probation. She was also required to complete 300 hours of community service and pay nearly $7,000 restitution, according to court records.

Ortigoza and Ramirez were in the Victoria County Jail Tuesday. Their bond was set at $30,000 each.

It takes a special kind of scum to steal from homeless folks.