Moves another case toward sentencing

Mueller team moves another case toward sentencing

By JOSH GERSTEIN

Special counsel Robert Mueller's prosecutors indicated Tuesday that they're ready to move toward sentencing of another defendant who pleaded guilty in the ongoing probe of Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election.

Prosecutors asked a federal judge to order a pre-sentencing report for Richard Pinedo, a Santa Paula, California, man who admitted in February to a felony identity fraud charge relating to the sale of bank account numbers that apparently helped Russian internet trolls pay for social media ads related to the U.S. presidential race.

Mueller's team and Pinedo's attorneys have said he did not know who he was dealing with when he sold the bank account numbers. A statement of facts Pinedo accepted as part of his plea said that he knew many of his customers were abroad and that he “willfully and intentionally avoided learning” about the stolen identities.

The joint request for the probation-office report on Pinedo's background and his crime suggests that his case could move to sentencing in the next two or three months.

Prosecutors filed a similar request last week in the higher-profile case of George Papadopoulos, the Trump campaign foreign policy adviser who appears to have triggered the Trump-Russia probe in May 2016 by telling an Australian diplomat that Russia planned to release hacked emails relating to Hillary Clinton. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to FBI investigators about his interactions with advocates for Russia.

A judge ordered that the pre-sentence report on Papadopoulos be prepared by August 1.