The sentence, handed down Friday by Judge Elizabeth Lee, was one year short of the maximum Jose Luis Padella-Jimenez, 32, could have received after being convicted March 8 of one felony count each…
REDWOOD CITY — A man convicted of pilfering more than $300,000 worth of memory chips from a San Carlos business has been sentenced to five years in San Mateo County Jail, prosecutors said.
The sentence, handed down Friday by Judge Elizabeth Lee, was one year short of the maximum Jose Luis Padella-Jimenez, 32, could have received after being convicted March 8 of one felony count each of burglary and grand theft, District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said.
Padella-Jimenez and at least one other accomplice with “insider knowledge” of Alliance Memory broke into the business in the early morning hours of Aug. 4,2015, by removing wooden panels from an exterior wall, according to prosecutors. Once inside, they snuck past surveillance cameras and motion-activated lights, then cut a hole through sheetrock to reach an office where many of the business’ products were stored.
Wagstaffe said 60 boxes of dynamic random-access memory chips were passed “assembly-line style” through the business and into a waiting van that had been stolen from nearby.
Alliance Memory President and CEO David Bagby found memory chips and boxes strewn about the sidewalk and inside the business when he arrived for work later that day, suggesting to prosecutors that the thieves were startled midway through the caper.
Padella-Jimenez was linked to the heist through DNA found on a flashlight left at the business, according to prosecutors.
Wagstaffe said Padella-Jimenez’s previous work experience as a car washer, busboy and painter suggested he was not the mastermind of the heist. But Padella-Jimenez refused to give up his accomplices, and none of the memory chips were ever recovered.
“None of the jobs he’s held have had anything to do with technology, ” Wagstaffe said. “My guess is that he was the laborer for the one or two guys who were the brains behind the operation.”
Padella-Jimenez received a “split sentence, ” which allows a judge to divide the time of a sentence between a jail term and a period of supervision by a probation officer known as mandatory supervision. In this case, Padella-Jimenez was given four years in jail and one year of mandatory supervision. He has 304 days credit for time served.
Lee ordered Padella-Jimenez to pay $317,590.60 in restitution to Alliance Memory, Wagstaffe said.
Padella-Jimenez, who entered the country illegally in 2010, also was told not to return illegally if he is deported to his native Mexico, Wagstaffe said.
