BILLINGS — A Mexican national who admitted to using personal information stolen from another individual to live and work in the Billings community for years was sentenced today to 51 months in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release, Acting U.S. Attorney Leif M. Johnson said.
Hugo Javier Quiroga, also known as Antonio Alatorre, 47, pleaded guilty in April to false representation of a Social Security number, false claim to United States citizenship and aggravated identity theft.
U.S. District Judge Susan P. Watters presided. Judge Watters also ordered $4,800 restitution.
The government alleged in court documents that in 2018, law enforcement began investigating a complaint from an individual named Antonio Alatorre, originally from Brownsville, Texas. The individual said his identification documents had been stolen in the 1990s and that he had encountered numerous problems from having his identity stolen. The individual told law enforcement that he had learned someone in Billings was using his identity.
Investigators determined that the individual in Billings was Quiroga, who went by the alias Antonio Alatorre, and that Quiroga had admitted to an ex-wife that he swam across the Rio Grande to enter the United States, lived in Brownsville, Texas, for a couple of years, and used the alias as a “work name.” Investigators determined that Quiroga was born in Matamoros, Mexico.
The government further alleged that Quiroga falsely used the victim’s personal identifying information to join the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers in Helena and was a union member from 2014 through 2018. Quiroga also worked for several other companies in Montana under the Alatorre name and falsely claimed that he was a United States citizen on one of the employment application forms.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Brendan McCarthy prosecuted the case, which was investigated by the FBI and Billings Police Department.
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