2 in Fraud Case Just Ingenious, Court Is Told

A former branch manager of the Bank of Coronado and her ex-husband, accused of defrauding the bank through an intricate manipulation of varying exchange rates for Mexican pesos, were simply “using good old American common sense and ingenuity,” a defense attorney said in court Tuesday.

“She didn’t intend to cheat them or defraud anybody,” the defense attorney, Raymond Coughlan, told the jury during opening arguments of a trial that could last several weeks.

Earlier, Assistant U.S. Atty. Stephen W. Peterson outlined the government’s charges that Guadalupe M. (Cha Cha) Alcantar and her ex-husband, Tomas Alcantar, had conspired in an elaborate scheme designed to defraud the bank for personal profit through the use of more than $800,000 in bank funds.

Guadalupe Alcantar, 38, was branch manager and assistant vice president of the Bank of Coronado’s San Ysidro branch.

In a 31-count indictment handed down in June, a federal grand jury charged the pair with conspiring to defraud the bank through the use of cashier’s checks authorized by Mrs. Alcantar. The two, who are free on bond, pleaded innocent.

If convicted, they face prison terms of up to five years and fines of up to $5,000 for each count.

In addition, Mrs. Alcantar also faces separate charges of falsifying government-required transaction reports in an alleged money-laundering scheme conducted through the bank. Trial on those charges is scheduled for May 26.

No wrongdoing has been alleged against the bank.

The government prosecutor charged that the Alcantars’ scheme capitalized on the favorable exchange rates for the Mexican peso available in the border community of San Ysidro, where dozens of exchange houses buy and sell pesos in a highly competitive manner. That intense competition tends to drive down the cost of the peso.

The scheme, Peterson charged, took advantage of that fact in the following fashion: At the bank, Mrs. Alcantar would authorize cashier’s checks for various amounts, which would be exchanged for pesos at the P.L. Money Exchange in San Ysidro. The pesos would then be deposited in Banamex, a Mexican bank, in Tijuana, from where the funds would be transferred by wire to another Banamex branch in the Mexican city of Nogales, just across the border from Nogales, Ariz.

At that point, Peterson charged, Tomas Alcantar, who runs a car-parts concern in Nogales, Ariz., would claim the pesos and, in effect, sell them to two U.S. produce firms that preferred to pay their Mexican customers with pesos. In exchange for the pesos, Tomas Alcantar would receive U.S. dollars. He would then arrange to wire most of the dollars back to the Bank of Coronado’s San Ysidro branch in time to cover the amounts of the original cashier’s checks.

The whole process, Peterson said, would take only a day or two--a short enough period that the uncovered cashiers’ checks were apparently unnoticed. Because the peso rate at San Ysidro was so favorable, the prosecutor said, both Alcantars were able to take a commission off the top and still replace the amounts of the cashiers’ checks, Peterson said. The prosecutor did not say how much profit the pair is accused of garnering.

The operation began to unravel in January, 1985, Peterson said, when federal investigators began a court-authorized wiretap of telephones in Mrs. Alcantar’s home and office. Agents listened as she discussed the scheme with others, including her ex-husband, Peterson said.

Between January and March, 1985, the prosecutor charged, Mrs. Alcantar authorized 15 Bank of Coronado cashier’s checks, totaling $886,142, that were used in the scheme.

Coughlan, the defense attorney, acknowledged that Mrs. Alcantar’s actions may not have been “the most kosher use of her time at the bank.” But he asserted that no crime had been committed, adding: “Not one dime was ever lost.”