For years, the Orange County Sheriff's Department employee lived a life of luxury, spending lavishly on Santa Ana dinners, West Hollywood bars and Las Vegas nightclubs. But it wasn't the department's salary that footed the bill — it was his unsuspecting grandmother, authorities said.
Roxana C. Laub, 33, of Santa Ana, recently pleaded guilty to two counts of check forgery and fraudulent use of credit cards in her grandmother's name, according to a US Department of Justice news release.
He faces up to 30 years in state prison on the bank fraud count and 15 years in state prison on the identity theft count, according to the DOJ. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for April 9, 2025.
Laub, whose departmental employment includes a uniformed corrections officer at the Orange County Jail, is accused of stealing his grandmother's ID and her savings for more than five years, prosecutors said.
From 2015 to 2017, he forged his grandmother's signature on more than 20 checks to fraudulently deposit $45,000 from his grandmother's bank account, prosecutors said.
His grandmother, 75, had no idea what was going on, prosecutors said.
During this time, Laub tried to impersonate her grandmother on the phone with the bank to get personal information about her grandmother's account. After admitting she was not her grandmother, she put her grandmother on the phone, who told a bank teller she had no knowledge of the checks made out to Laub, prosecutors said.
Laub then took her grandmother's phone and told the bank employee that her grandmother was sick and unable to speak, even though the employee asked that the grandmother be put back on the line, prosecutors said.
Then, from March 2020 to September 2022, Laub used his 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 nightclub in Las Vegas, prosecutors said. He used his grandmother's bank account to pay more than $14,000 of those credit card charges without his grandmother's knowledge, prosecutors said.
Laub expressed remorse for his actions and, in a document released by federal agents, told a family member that “I know what I did is unforgivable,” prosecutors said. Laub also agreed to repay all the money he had stolen from his grandmother, prosecutors said.
These cases are being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Office of the Inspector General with the assistance of the Long Beach Police Department.
Help for victims of financial fraud age 60 and older is available through the National Elder Fraud Hotline at (833) 372-8311.
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