A woman from Waterloo, Iowa, has been sentenced to over two years in federal prison for her involvement in a check fraud scheme that resulted in nearly $250,000 being stolen from three financial institutions. Angela Celina Hernandez, previously known as Angela Celina Sermeno, aged 40, was sentenced following her guilty plea on May 31, 2024, to one count of bank fraud.
According to the plea agreement, Hernandez admitted to being the sole signatory on a checking account for a roofing company at a credit union in Dubuque. In January 2020, she repeatedly redeposited previously cleared checks from a Wisconsin contractor to falsely and temporarily inflate the account balance. This allowed her to conduct over $150,000 in rapid transfers and withdrawals based on the inflated balance. Later, in July 2021, Hernandez issued bad checks at another credit union causing losses exceeding $75,000. By February 2022, she had passed additional bad checks at a third financial institution resulting in an extra $12,000 loss.
The sentencing took place in Cedar Rapids under United States District Court Chief Judge C.J. Williams. Hernandez received a sentence of 27 months imprisonment and was ordered to pay restitution amounting to $248,005.28 to the affected financial institutions. Following her prison term, she will be subject to five years of supervised release; federal sentences do not allow for parole.
Hernandez remains free on bond until she surrenders herself to the Bureau of Prisons for transport to a federal facility on an unspecified date.
Assistant United States Attorney Timothy L. Vavricek prosecuted the case which was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons.