by Richard W. Millar, Jr.

Prisoners are an unhappy lot. Prisoners have a lot of time on their hands. Prisoners often blame their sentencing judge, rather than themselves. When these all coalesce, we see stories of how prisoners conspire to “get back” at judges.

Some of these stories are truly horrifying and one has been playing out in our county recently. But, every now and then, a story burbles to the surface that, while reprehensible, is at the very least imaginative.

This one comes out of that well-known prisoners’ rights state: Texas.

Leandro Cardenas Luna, fifty-eight years old, is a convicted drug smuggler, who was not pleased with an eleven-year sentence imposed by United States District Judge Alia Moses. (If he was unhappy with eleven years, he is going to be really, really unhappy now, but I digress.) According to reports, he was convicted of smuggling more than 280 pounds of marijuana near Comstock, Texas, a small town of some 475 hearty souls not surprisingly close to the Mexican border. He was sentenced to ten years with a one-year add-on inasmuch as his arrest violated his “supervised” release in a prior conviction for smuggling 660 pounds of marijuana. (Apparently, he wasn’t closely supervised but, again, I digress.)

In 2009, he escaped from prison with another inmate and was later found and arrested in Mexico. This resulted in another two years added to the prior eleven years.

He was not, shall we say, up for the Model Prisoner of the Year Award.

If you were asked to predict the revenge scheme a convicted drug smuggler marinating in anger would come up with, I would bet, dollars to donuts, that a bankruptcy claim would not be high on your list. It was nowhere on mine.

Mr. Luna allegedly ginned up a claim that Judge Moses owed him $5,800,000. Then he did what every red-blooded American creditor who was stiffed for $5.8M would do: he filed an involuntary bankruptcy petition against the judge.

I assume, and guess Mr. Luna assumed as well, that his outgoing mail was inspected by prison officials, so, according to the government, he somehow persuaded his stepson to mail the involuntary petition to the federal bankruptcy court in San Antonio.

Which accepted it.

Reports do not reveal Judge Moses’ reaction to learning she was now involuntarily in bankruptcy court, but a fair guess would be that she was even more unhappy than Mr. Luna was with his eleven-year sentence.

If Mr. Luna’s idea was to get a sentence reduction, it didn’t work. He is now charged with bankruptcy fraud and mail fraud and, if convicted (I can’t wait to see his defense), faces an extra thirty years in prison. Since Judge Moses is expected to testify, the United States Circuit Court of Appeals appointed Judge Nancy Atlas, a judge from a different district, to preside over the upcoming trial.

If I were Judge Atlas, I would keep my computer open on PACER for all new bankruptcy filings.

Richard W. Millar, Jr. is a member of the firm of Millar, Hodges & Bemis in Newport Beach. He can be reached at millar@mhblaw.net.