This month inside Orange County’s Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse, the daughter of an ultra-wealthy Newport Beach businessman faced punishment for possessing 43 debit and credit cards plus a social security card and 59 pieces of mail belonging to other individuals.
Jennifer Sprenger, whose criminal justice system woes sprung in part from abusing methamphetamine and partying with less than stellar people, found herself in 2018 law enforcement custody after a two-day drug binge.
In March, Sprenger pleaded guilty to one of three counts issued by a federal grand jury last July.
The 49-year-old defendant, who sold high-end refurbished purses and wallets, hoped for a prison term of no more than eight months, which would have effectively amounted to a time already served sentence.
To bolster her plea for leniency, Sprenger apologized to U.S. District Court Judge James V. Selna, but said her arrest may have saved her life by leading to sobriety as well as plans to help others emerge from drug addiction.
Selna determined the appropriate punishment is an 18-month term.
U.S. Bureau of Prison officials are currently housing her inside the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles.
After her release, she must undergo supervised probation for three years.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.
no mug shot? odd. i wonder what external pressures led to this ommision?
It’s common not to have mugshots for federal cases.
The inequity of the justice system isn’t so divided along racial lines as it is economic lines. If this woman didn’t have a fat-cat daddy to pay for her defense, I’had a sure she would have had a much longer sentence.
It’s the worst form of justice sytem except for all others.