Editor’s Note: Law Week Colorado edits court opinion summaries for style and, when necessary, length.
Jalon Torres was charged with numerous counts of wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering. A magistrate judge ordered Torres’s pretrial detention under the federal Bail Reform Act and the district court agreed with the magistrate judge’s analysis on de novo review. Torres appealed.
Torres was arrested in Colorado on March 12, 2021, in connection with criminal charges in the Western District of North Carolina. During his arrest on those charges, FBI agents searched his Colorado Springs residence, yielding information relating to The Student Loan Resolution Center LLC, a business entity Torres ran. That information included communications between Torres and customers of SLRC. The agents also found a check printing machine, multiple checks and indications of Torres using at least ten different aliases on electronic devices in his home.
These discoveries and a subsequent investigation resulted in the government bringing additional criminal charges against Torres in the District of Colorado for wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The indictment alleges Torres ran a scheme through SLRC in which he promised to reduce or eliminate his customers’ student loans, but stole from them instead, the opinion noted.
In early April of this year, Torres was arrested in Florida on Colorado charges, and the government sought pretrial detention. A Florida magistrate judge held a detention hearing and took testimony from an IRS special agent who described Torres’s scheme. As described by the agent, that scheme involved SLRC signing contracts that permitted SLRC to withdraw money from customers’ bank accounts a set number of times. Torres withdrew money from the accounts of about 300 SLRC customers more times than their contracts authorized, the opinion added.
When some customers closed their accounts or reported the fraud to their banks, Torres allegedly threatened them. For example, the IRS agent played one voicemail in which someone used an alias but who sounded like Torres threatened to take a quarter of the customer’s future paychecks if the customer didn’t pay a certain amount by the afternoon. The caller also threatened to report the customer to the IRS. In an email to another customer, Torres pretended to be an attorney and threatened the customer with litigation if she didn’t keep paying SLRC. He also attached photos of the customer and her family to the email. Investigators found more than 20 such emails to customers originating from the same email address.
The IRS agent also testified as to the facts underlying the earlier North Carolina case. As charged in that case, after a bank employee closed a bank account controlled by Torres for violations of bank policy, Torres sent the employee threatening text messages. Torres was indicted for cyberstalking and making interstate threats, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a term of 27 months imprisonment, which he completed a few months before his arrest for the Colorado charges. The agent further testified Torres similarly had threatened a bank employee in Kansas City, although that allegation wasn’t included in the North Carolina charges.
After the hearing, the magistrate judge issued an order of detention, finding under the BRA that no conditions or combination of conditions will reasonably assure the safety of the community. The magistrate judge based her decision on evidence she characterized as showing Torres’s “pattern of becoming very aggressive with people and threatening them in shockingly aggressive and scary ways.”
Torres then filed a motion for a de novo review of the magistrate judge’s pretrial detention order. The district court, having reviewed de novo the evidence and testimony presented to the magistrate judge, agreed with the magistrate judge’s conclusion in a written decision.
The 10th Circuit reviewed the district court’s ultimate detention decision de novo because it presented mixed questions of law and fact; however, it reviewed the underlying findings of fact for clear error, citing the decision United States v. Cisneros. “A finding is clearly erroneous when, although there is evidence to support it, the reviewing court, on review of the entire record, is left with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed,” the opinion noted, citing the decision United States v. Gilgert.
The 10th Circuit examined four factors in determining whether any release conditions reasonably assure the safety of others and the community: “the nature and circumstances of the offense charged . . . ; the weight of the evidence against the person; the history and characteristics of the person . . . ; and the nature and seriousness of the danger to any person or the community that would be posed by the person’s release.”
After evaluation, the district court considered the evidence in light of the relevant statutory factors, and it made the necessary factual findings to support its pretrial detention order. The 10th Circuit affirmed. The government’s motion to dismiss was denied as moot.