Richard Pinedo, California fake salesman ID who helped Mueller investigate Russians, to be sentenced

Since his guilty plea was unsealed, Pinedo says he is confronted with the issue of national attention.

Pinedo asked Judge Dabney Friedrich of the US District Court in DC to spare him from serving time in prison.

"I take full responsibility for what I've done," he told the court Wednesday. "I've tried everything possible to help in this investigation."

Prosecutors had not asked the judge for any particular sentence, though they did not stop short of asking for a recent court filing.

Prosecutors told the judge that Pinedo Gave them "significant assistance" and that their admissions and testimony "saved the government significant time and resources in the investigation."

The Prosecutors describe Pinedo's crime as "fraud committed on a large scale, committed remotely through the ease of the internet, with real-life damage inflicted on the scores of innocent victims," ​​according to their memo to the judge. Since they wrote to the judge in late September, Friedrich has asked for clarification on the number of victims.

Court staff calculated the sentence of 12 to 18 months in prison for Pinedo, but given the prosecutors' leniency in their argument before his sentencing Pinedo was also sentenced to 24 months of supervised release.

Previously, two other defendants in the Mueller investigation, the Dutch lawyer Alex Van Der Zwaan and former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, received 30-day and 14-day prison sentences, respectively. Both had lied to investigators.

Several other defendants who have pleaded guilty to Mueller charges, including national security adviser Michael Flynn, train Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates, have not yet been sentenced.

Arrest took Pinedo by surprise

Pinedo, a single 28-year-old nicknamed "Ricky" by his parents, lived a humble life in southern California before he unwittingly helped Russians allegedly undermine the 2016 election and federal investigators caught him.

"Pinedo's attorneys wrote to the judge," Pinedo's attorneys wrote: "Never in his wildest dreams could he have been able to set up PayPal accounts could be used to interfere with a presidential election. "Mr. Pinedo now understands that in a direct and meaningful way, his illegal behavior has helped to undermine American democracy – a fact Mr. Pinedo deeply regrets and will be forced to live with him for the rest of his life."

His train national father's guardsman, wrote how "Ricky" does not drink alcohol, take drugs and has never faced legal action before.

"This incident took everyone by surprise," his father wrote. "I just hope that when all of this starts to die down, my son and the rest of the family go back to living our normal lives."

Pinedo first intersected with the Mueller probe in December 2017, when the FBI raided his family in rural Santa Paula, California, his attorneys said. He spoke to the FBI without seeking his own attorney.

Since 's Pinedo name has become publicly associated with the Russians' case, he' s leaving the internet, his attorneys say.

The California man and his father, who has the same name, have been harassed, do not think of it. He "lives in a constant state of fear," his attorneys wrote, and "often suffers severe anxiety simply driving through his own neighborhood."

Pinedo testified before a federal grand jury, which approved the indictment of the Internet Research Agency, Concord Management and Consulting and the oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, known as "Putin's Chief."

Of the 16 defendants in the social media propaganda case, only Concord Management has appeared in US short. The company says it is not guilty.