A 30-year-old woman who posed as a teenage boy and sexually assaulted an Everett girl now is charged with first-degree theft for allegedly bilking people out of more than $40,000.
Lorelei J. Corpuz, of Everett, wrote numerous checks on her closed bank account for amounts totaling $40,000, Snohomish County deputy prosecutor Mark Roe said in charging papers.
Corpuz passed these checks to numerous people, “in essence stealing from each one of them or the bank,” Roe said.
She told various stories to victims, sometimes just telling them that she needed the money, Roe said.
She also made numerous withdrawals from a credit union’s ATM, pocketing money after convincing members to disclose their personal identification numbers, Roe said.
Sometimes she made deposits to victims’ accounts “with worthless checks from her closed account, and then immediately make withdrawals in cash,” Roe said.
Corpuz attracted international attention earlier this year when she was arrested and charged with child molestation after passing herself off as a 17-year-old boy named “Mark Villanueva.”
Roe said he got calls from overseas about the unusual case, and in court he was critical of the circus atmosphere surrounding media coverage.
Corpuz met the girl in September 2005 at an area mall and she lived with the girl’s family on and off until April of this year.
The illegal sexual contact came to the attention of authorities after a police traffic stop, and Corpuz was arrested on a warrant.
The girl was in the car at the time. Her parents, Vietnamese immigrants who speak little English, told police they had no idea the slight Corpuz, whom they knew as Mark, was a 30-year-old woman.
Corpuz was charged with third-degree child molestation in April. She pleaded guilty in May and was sentenced to a year in jail in June.
As a part of the plea agreement, Corpuz said she also would plead guilty to first-degree theft for the bad checks, Roe said in court papers.
Her molestation conviction will require her to register as a sex offender when she’s released.
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