4 arrested on charges of forgery, identity theft

Four employees of Don Juan’s Mexican restaurant in Fishersville have been arrested on charges of identity theft and document forgery, police said Saturday.
Authorities are searching for 10 more Don Juan’s employees facing the same charges in an investigation that now involves the Virginia State Police, the U.S. Marshal’s Service and the federal Department of Homeland Security, Virginia State Police Trooper Timothy Simmons said. All the suspects are illegal aliens, Simmons said.
Authorities arrested three Don Juan’s workers at 11 a.m. Friday at the restaurant off Route 250 between Staunton and Waynesboro. Officers simultaneously executed a search warrant at a home in the 1500 block of Jefferson Highway where some employees had been living, Simmons said.
The investigation began May 19 when Don Juan’s employee Crisogono Hernandez, 23, of Fishersville, was pulled over at the intersection of Barterbrook Road and Frontier Drive in Augusta County for disregarding a stoplight, Simmons said. Hernandez initially produced a phony identity card, but eventually admitted he was an illegal alien and was arrested, Simmons said.
When investigators following up on the arrest went to Don Juan’s to examine the restaurant’s employment records, a manager there seemed “very nervous,” and obviously skipped over files while officers looked on, Simmons said.
Search warrants were subsequently issued for Don Juan’s locations in Fishersville and Verona, Simmons said. More than 100 employee files were seized, many containing fraudulent Social Security and resident alien cards. The Social Security numbers in most cases belonged to actual U.S. citizens, he said.
Norberto Reguldo-Leon, 37, of Roanoke; Pedro Calderon-Frias, 23, of Waynesboro; and Jorge A. Rodriguez-Perez, 27, of Roanoke, were arrested Friday on charges of felony forgery of public records, felony uttering of public records and misdemeanor identity theft, Simmons said. Hernanadez, who has been in custody since last month’s traffic stop, is facing the same charges, as are the 10 other employees, Simmons said. Additional tax fraud charges are pending, he said.
Locating the other employees could be difficult, Simmons said.
“All have stolen Social Security numbers and credentials…” he said. “There is no real ability to trace their true identity. They start from scratch and move on.”
Juan Lopez-Aguirre, 44, owner of the two Don Juan’s restaurants, was sentenced in May to eight years and four months in prison for selling more than $200,000 in methamphetamine. Lopez-Aguirre was the middleman in a series of large drug deals between 2005 and last year, including a deal with a police informant in the El Puerto Mexican Restaurant parking lot in Waynesboro. That deal sparked others with the informant as police scrutiny intensified.