SAN DIEGO (CNS) – A Chula Vista woman previously convicted of embezzling from her employer and then faking a cancer diagnosis to avoid going to prison pleaded guilty today to new fraud charges for falsely representing to a prospective employer that she’d been exonerated in her criminal case.<\/p>\n
Ashleigh Lynn Chavez, 42, was sentenced to prison for taking over $160,000 from a former employer, then later submitting forged doctor’s letters to a judge that recommended she serve time in home confinement rather than prison.<\/p>\n
She was released from custody in 2023.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors allege that the following year, she submitted a forged letter — supposedly written by her defense attorney — in a job application
that fraudulently claimed she’d been exonerated in the criminal case and prosecutors dismissed all charges against her.<\/p>\n
The letter appeared to be written to Chavez from her attorney, and in it, the “attorney ” advised Chavez that her court records had been sealed so she shouldn’t share them with anyone, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.<\/p>\n
Chavez had also been fired by a nonprofit after they discovered her convictions through a background check, but prosecutors say Chavez submitted a forged recommendation letter as part of her job application that was supposedly written by the nonprofit’s CEO.<\/p>\n
Chavez was hired due in part to the forged documents, according to her plea agreement. She’s slated to be sentenced in October.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026, City News Service, Inc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN DIEGO (CNS) – A Chula Vista woman previously convicted of embezzling from her employer and then faking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57371,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[74,76,75],"class_list":["post-402865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}