San Ysidro

The former manager of a San Ysidro bank was sentenced to two years of unsupervised probation for her conviction on currency charges that a federal judge denigrated as pure technicalities.

Guadalupe (Cha Cha) Alcantar faced a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each of the three counts of embezzlement on which she was found guilty in May in U.S. District Court.

A jury deliberated seven days before finding Alcantar, former manager of the San Ysidro branch of the Bank of Coronado, innocent of 28 additional counts. After a second trial last month, Alcantar, 39, was found innocent of money-laundering charges as well.

The jury in the first trial also acquitted her ex-husband, Tomas Alcantar, on all 31 counts in the felony indictment.

U.S. District Judge Rudi M. Brewster rejected a probation officer’s recommendation that Guadalupe Alcantar be barred from working at a financial institution. He also refused to place her on supervised probation.

Brewster said prosecutors presented no convincing evidence that Alcantar was involved in narcotics dealings or money laundering, though it was clear to him that the San Ysidro bank had procedural problems and she was one of several people who made mistakes in handling the bank’s business.

Alcantar was convicted of engaging in a scheme to use the bank’s money to play the peso market, transferring funds between U.S. and Mexican banks and money exchanges to take advantage of the Mexican currency’s fluctuating value.

The bank’s money would be returned in a day or two, after the profit from the currency manipulation was skimmed from the top.

Brewster said evidence in the case indicated that Alcantar was scrupulous to avoid any risk of harm to the bank in the currency manipulations.