A New Jersey man was sentenced Monday to three years of probation in a bail scam that netted $5,000 from a Hempfield woman who state police said was led to believe her daughter needed bail money.
Noel Medrano-Abreu, 30, will remain jailed pending the outcome of a similar case in Allegheny County Court. Assistant District Attorney Adam Barr said Medrano-Abreu also has an immigration detainer.
“I don’t believe he’s going anywhere until he faces immigration court,” Barr said.
Medrano-Abreu pleaded guilty Monday to a count of criminal use of a communication facility. Police said he drove co-defendant Wilson Burgos-Hernandez, 23, of New Jersey to a woman’s home Feb. 28 in the Midway neighborhood to collect money from her. Police said a caller claimed that the woman’s daughter had been involved in a car crash and needed bail money to get out of jail.
She gave Burgos-Hernandez, who she believed was a bail bondsman, $5,000.
Burgos-Hernandez was in possession of $5,000 upon his arrest, according to court papers.
An interpreter for Medrano-Abreu, speaking Spanish, translated Monday’s hearing.
He is tentatively scheduled for an Oct. 5 nonjury trial in Allegheny County Court on charges filed by Bethel Park police. Officers there investigated a similar incident the same day involving an elderly resident who reported receiving a call requesting bail money for a relative who purportedly had been arrested.
Burgos-Hernandez has a nonjury trial scheduled the same day for the same incident in Bethel Park and another in Leetsdale, according to court records. He pleaded guilty in June to the Westmoreland County case and was sentenced to six to 23 months in jail.
