The U.S. Marshal Service said there is still paperwork involved and the processing must be completed before the three can be admitted to a federal prison facility.
“Even the three defendants don’t know where they are heading,” a U.S. Marshal Service representative said.
The three defendants learned that they would be flown out of the island only on Monday morning.
“The Marshal Service Office was informed that a prison facility is already available for the three defendants and that’s when we informed the three that they would be leaving,” the Marshal Service representative said.
Villagomez and the Santos couple “brought nothing but the clothes on their back” when they showed up at the U.S. Marshalls Office at 9:40 a.m. on Monday.
“They are not allowed to bring anything else with them,” the Marshals Service repsesentative said.
But the three defendants were given time to say goodbye to their families who accompanied them to the federal court building on Monday morning.
The Santos couple will be separated from each other as there is no prison facility that allows mixed male and female inmates.
“Villagomez and James Santos will most probably be separated, too,” the Marshal Service representative said.
The three defendants left Saipan on Monday afternoon aboard a Continental Airlines plane.
“From the time they left the CNMI up to the time they will be admitted to a prison facility, we won’t know where they are,” the Marshal Service representative said.
Following the court orders for their sentencing on Aug. 5, the Marshal Service representative said the three defendants had been calling the U.S. Marshal Office every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to check if a prison facility was already available for them.
They also agreed to turn themselves in as soon as they were informed that they had to be flown to the states to start serving their sentence.
U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Alex R. Munson sentenced Villagomez to a jail term of seven years and three months.
The Santos couple will serve six years and six months in jail.
The three, who were found guilty of corruption charges, have filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
