The UNITED STATE Department of Justice reports that 4 people have actually been billed for their functions in a conspiracy theory to offer fake UNITED STATE Coast Guard vendor seafarer qualifications in Norfolk, Va.
According to claims in an unsealed charge, Lamont Godfrey, 42, of Portsmouth, Va., Eugene Johnson, 45, of Norfolk, Va., Shunmanique Willis, 43, of Texas, and also Alonzo Williams, 45, of Louisiana, acted jointly to produce fake certifications from the Mid-Atlantic Maritime Academy (MOM) and also offer them to vendor sailors for an earnings.
The MOM is an exclusive advanced maritime training facility, using sailors over 100 UNITED STATE Coast Guard accepted deck and also design training courses required for vendor sailors to hold different placements on vendor vessels. Godfrey helped the MOM as the college’s principal manager.
According to the charge, claims the Department of Justice, Godfrey utilized this placement to produce phony MOM program certifications for sailors that had actually never ever taken the MOM training courses, for hundreds of bucks in repayments. The sailors would certainly obtain the phony certifications together with directions on just how to fill them in the Coast Guard systems and also be attributed with a deceptive Coast Guard credentials. Johnson, Willis, and also Williams collaborated with Godfrey as brokers to discover added sailors ready to purchase the phony certifications. In exchange for their initiatives, Johnson, Willis, and also Williams all obtained a cut of the illegal profits from the plan. In overall, the conspiracy theory netted over $200,000 in benefit from the manufacturing of these phony MOM certifications and also included over 150 sailors buying deceptive credentials.
Godfrey, Johnson, Willis, and also Williams are billed with conspiracy theory, mail scams, cord scams, and also exacerbated identification burglary. If founded guilty, they encounter a required minimum of 2 years behind bars. Actual sentences for government criminal offenses are usually much less than the optimum charges. A government area court judge will certainly identify any kind of sentence after thinking about the UNITED STATE Sentencing Guidelines and also various other legal aspects.
