U.S. District Court for the NMI Magistrate Judge Heather Kennedy yesterday ordered the pre-trial release of former U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer Bob Hajime Deleon Guerrero Yamagishi\u2014but with strict conditions.<\/p>\n
Yamagishi was indicted on 37 counts of wire fraud and was arrested last week.<\/p>\n
Kennedy required Yamagishi to submit to substance abuse testing, observe a 6pm to 9am curfew, no consumption and possession of alcohol and controlled substance, no possession of a gun, and to stay away from gambling or poker places.<\/p>\n
The magistrate judge also granted U.S. Probation officer Margarita Wonenberg\u2019s recommendation to install a location-monitoring device to check Yamagishi\u2019s movement.<\/p>\n
Kennedy also required Yamagishi, among other conditions, to refrain from having contact with his cousin, who is allegedly a bad influence to him.<\/p>\n
Kennedy noted that the prosecution originally asked for Yamagishi\u2019s continued detention pending trial but later agreed for pre-trial release subject to conditions because of issues of gambling and methamphetamine addiction.<\/p>\n
The judge said the best for Yamagishi is supervised release pending trial so he can undergo drug treatment.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to take that seriously,\u201d Kennedy told the defendant.<\/p>\n
The judge reminded Yamagishi that if he violates the conditions, he will be arrested again and possibly face other charges.<\/p>\n
Assistant U.S. attorney Russell Lorfing appeared for the U.S. government, Attorney Janet H. King is court-appointed counsel for Yamagishi.<\/p>\n
The trial will begin on Aug. 3, 2015.<\/p>\n
According to the indictment, between July 5 and Aug. 20, 2014, Yamagishi, while a CBP officer, allegedly used his travel cash card in two stores on Saipan to obtain cash or other property and then used the cash to gamble or buy drugs.<\/p>\n
CBP Internal Affairs special agent Brian Kawabata stated that Yamagish is suicidal, hooked on gambling, can\u2019t control his addiction to \u201cice,\u201d and even attempted to become a drug supplier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
U.S. District Court for the NMI Magistrate Judge Heather Kennedy yesterday ordered the pre-trial release…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[5115,2130,5116,2466],"class_list":["post-203491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-brian-kawabata","tag-cbp","tag-margarita-wonenberg","tag-russell-lorfing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203491\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}