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Pseudonym comes back to haunt - and cost - inmate
By JAMIE SATTERFIELD, satterfield@knews.com
August 19, 2006


Attention future criminals: If arrested, avoid the temptation to toss out a fake name.
It cost Vicente Corona $350, and he doesn't even know it.

U.S. District Court Judge Leon Jordan has ordered Corona's jail account docked every month until a $350 fee for the filing of federal lawsuits is paid. Jordan's order came after Corona appeared to thumb his nose at the judge's order that he either fork out the filing fee or file a form saying he's too broke to pay it.

What Jordan apparently did not know is that Corona never got a copy of the order, which was mailed to the Blount County Jail, where Corona is being housed. Nor has Corona received notice of Jordan's order docking Corona's jail account.

Both pieces of mail were returned to the federal court clerk's office marked "no such inmate housed here." That's because Blount jailers believed - until a News Sentinel reporter called the agency Friday afternoon - that Corona was an inmate named Antonio Varagan.

A review of court records and testimony at prior court hearings offers the following explanation for Corona's costly alias woes:

Corona is the alleged top dog in a massive mail-order drug distribution network being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Mike Winck in federal court in Knoxville.

He is being held in the Blount County Jail awaiting trial.

But when Corona was arrested in California in January, authorities allege he was using identification in the name of Antonio Varagan. The alias apparently was being used to cloak his identity as an illegal immigrant already booted from the U.S. once, authorities have alleged.

He was booked into the Blount County Jail as Antonio Varagan. He later admitted in federal court in Knoxville that his real name is Corona.

No one told the folks at the Blount County Jail.

In May, Corona - using his real name - filed a lawsuit he handwrote in his jail cell over what he contends are overcrowded, nasty and downright unconstitutional conditions at the Blount County Jail.

His complaints include bugs in the shower; a meatless, repetitive food menu; inadequate staffing and medical care; "stagnant air"; cells that are "often dirty and infested with vermin and stink"; and too few opportunities for exercise.

He asked in the lawsuit that it be certified as a class-action filing on behalf of all inmates at the Blount facility, which contracts with the federal government to house federal inmates such as Corona. The jail also houses people accused of committing crimes in Blount County.

Under federal law, Corona could have saved himself the $350 filing fee typically charged for the leveling of a federal court lawsuit if he were too broke to pay it. He would have needed to file a form swearing to his poverty.

He didn't. Jordan issued an order directing him to either pay the fee or file the form. When Corona failed to respond within the 30 days Jordan had given him, the federal judge issued another order dismissing Corona's lawsuit, barring him from filing it again, and ordering his jail "trust account" to be docked.

It was not immediately known Friday if Jordan would reconsider given that Corona never received the judge's orders.

Jamie Satterfield may be reached at 865-342-6308.

Copyright 2006, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.
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Copyright 2006, KnoxNews. All Rights Reserved.