A man born in Puebla, Mexico, who'd been living in the U.S. using a forged birth certificate, is accused of illegally obtaining nearly two decades' worth of Permanent Fund dividend checks, according to charges filed in Anchorage Superior Court.
The state has charged Jose Martignon, 48, with a single count of scheming to defraud, a felony. By prosecutors' count, Martignon collected about $24,000 from the checks.
A court summons was filed for Martignon on Oct. 7.
Prosecutors say Martignon applied for the PFD from 1988 to 2001 and from 2007 through 2011. On each of his PFD applications, he stated he was a U.S. citizen. However, during an interview with Homeland Security investigators on May 2, 2011, he admitted to having been born in Mexico. The forged birth certificate allegedly said he was born in Los Angeles County, California.
Martignon entered the country using a Mexican passport in 1986 and then used a forged birth certificate to falsely claim citizenship, according to the charges.
The charges don't specify whether Martignon lived in Alaska during the years he applied for the checks. The court summons lists a West Anchorage address for Martignon.
Investigators' tally of Martignon's PFD checks show he didn't get them in 1988 and 1989.
An initial court appearance in the case has been set for Oct. 30.
The Alaska Department of Revenue's Criminal Investigation Unit occasionally sees PFD applicants who illegally claim U.S. citizenship, said the department's supervisor of PFD fraud Shawn Stendevad. Those instances have become rare, Stendevad said. She recalls only seeing a few over the past decade.
Currently, the cases are split among people who've never lived in Alaska and former residents trying to get checks, Stendevad said. And the unit is catching more instances of people not declaring their absence from the state, like snowbirds, she said.