A former Sandia National Laboratories employee’s maneuvering for a lighter prison sentence has the government wondering whether the ex-Sandian should receive any sentencing leniency at all, according to a Friday court filing.
Joshua Cordova has acted “shamelessly” since reading a plea agreement with the government, claiming that tens of thousands of dollars worth personal items he charged on his Sandia corporate credit card were allowable, work-related purchases, the U.S. attorney in the case wrote in a Friday filing with the U.S. District Court for New Mexico.
The claim predates the plea deal announced in May. Cordova and his lawyers say he stole at somewhere between $75,000 and $140,000 from the lab by abusing him company credit card — golf clubs, rings, video games, a trampoline and hardware store goods were among the items rung up on the card — but the government maintains the low-end of the range is at least $95,000.
Cordova’s camp, citing federal sentencing guidelines, argues the difference could mean two fewer months in prison for the former military, law-enforcement and emergency personnel trainer: 10 months instead of a year.
Now, the U.S. attorney, who had previously responded to Cordova’s dickering about the sentencing guidelines with technical, legal arguments, has taken the gloves off. In Friday’s filing, the prosecution raised doubts before the court about whether Cordova really had accepted responsibility for his crimes and whether he should receive any leniency in his sentencing at all.
In a footnote to the filing, the government also brought up Cordova’s troubled past in the Navy, from which he was discharged for bad conduct and sentenced to 60 days’ confinement after pleading guilty in a court martial to improperly disposing of government property, including by trading night vision goggles for a diamond ring in a pawn shop.
Sandia hired Cordova after his court martial, the U.S. attorney wrote.
Amid the deadlock, the court has scheduled an evidentiary hearing for Nov. 18. Each side will be able to present evidence about which of Cordova’s purchases constituted fraudulent expenses and which did not.
At that hearing, the government said in Friday’s filing, “the testimony and evidence will show that the defendant objections are specious, and he has provided false or misleading information to the Probation Office or the Court.”
