A 60-year-old man was sentenced Monday to a year in federal prison for selling hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of fake memorabilia.
U.S. District Judge James Selna sentenced Anthony J. Tremayne to a year and one day behind bars. Selna also fined the defendant $7,500 and set a restitution hearing for Oct. 27.
Tremayne pleaded guilty in April to a count of mail fraud.
Tremayne admitted in his plea deal that from 2010 through December 2019 he would sell memorabilia purporting to have celebrity autographs that were fake, according to prosecutors.
Tremayne would even include a certificate of authenticity despite forging the signatures himself, prosecutors said.
The defendant sold between $250,000 to $550,000 worth of bogus memorabilia, prosecutors said.
He got caught in November 2019 sending a “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” photo with phony signatures to an undercover FBI agent in Anaheim for $200, prosecutors said.
Tremayne’s attorney, Jan Edward Ronis, noted in court papers that his client had no criminal history. Tremayne was born in Riverside and has been married to his wife, Margarita Cabra, since 2005, and the couple have a 17-year-old daughter, Fatima, Ronis said.
Tremayne’s family has lived in Tijuana since 2015, Ronis said.
The defendant’s wife wrote a letter to Selna saying her husband “works long hours to make sure we have what we need, and even though we’ve had some struggles I’ve always known he tries to do the best he can.”
She added her husband is “not perfect… but he is present in our lives, he brings home small surprises, checks in with me during the day, and shows affection in his own way.”
Tremayne “loves our daughter deeply, and I know how proud he is of her,” Cabra wrote.
Cabra said she was concerned with her husband’s health. Tremayne has a “history of hypertension,” Ronis said.
The couple’s daughter wrote a letter saying her father “motivates me to do well in school, to dream big, and to stay focused.”
The defendant’s attorney argued that his client turned to the scam because he “faced mounting financial challenges” in the industry he worked in for years.
“Taken together, the records shows that the circumstances leading to this offense were those of a man overwhelmed by stress and poor judgment, not a career criminal or someone indifferent to the law,” Ronis argued.
The defense attorney argued for time served with two years of supervised release.