For years, an Orange County Sheriff’s Department employee was living large, spending lavishly on Santa Ana dinners, West Hollywood bars and a nightclub in Las Vegas. But it wasn’t the department’s payroll footing the bill — it was her unsuspecting grandmother, authorities said.
Roxana C. Laub, 33, of Santa Ana, recently pleaded guilty to two felony charges for forging checks and fraudulently using credit cards in her grandmother’s name, according to a U.S. Department of Justice news release.
She faces up to 30 years in federal prison for the bank fraud count and up to 15 years in federal prison for the identity theft count, according to the DOJ. Her sentencing hearing is scheduled for April 9, 2025.
Laub, whose employment with the department has included a stint as a uniformed correctional officer at the Orange County jail, is accused of stealing her grandmother’s identity and savings for more than five years, prosecutors said.
From 2015 to 2017, she forged her grandmother’s signature on more than 20 checks in order to fraudulently deposit some $45,000 from her grandmother’s bank account into her own, prosecutors said.
Her 75-year-old grandmother had no clue what was going on, prosecutors said.
During this time, Laub attempted to pose as her grandmother on the phone with the bank to extract personal information about her grandmother’s account. After admitting she wasn’t the grandmother, she put her actual grandmother on the phone who told the bank employee she had no knowledge of the checks made payable to Laub, prosecutors said.
Laub then took the phone away from her grandmother and told the bank employee that her grandmother was feeling ill and unable to talk any further, even though the employee requested that the grandmother be put back on the line, prosecutors said.
Then from March 2020 to September 2022, Laub used her grandmother’s credit card to charge thousands of dollars for personal expenses such as meals at restaurants in Santa Ana and West Hollywood, bars in West Hollywood and a night club in Las Vegas, prosecutors said. She used her grandmother’s bank account to make more than $14,000 in payments for those credit card charges without her grandmother’s knowledge, prosecutors said.
Laub has shown some remorse for her acts and, in a text thread uncovered by government agents, told a family member “I know what I did is unforgivable,” prosecutors said. Laub has also agreed to pay back all the money she stole from her grandmother, prosecutors said.
The crimes were investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Office of the Inspector General with assistance from the Long Beach Police Department.
Help for financial fraud victims age 60 and over is available through the National Elder Fraud Hotline at (833) 372-8311.