WASHINGTON — The serial purse-snatcher who is accused of swiping Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s Gucci bag requested an emergency passport from the Chilean consulate after the crime made national headlines, a federal prosecutor revealed Wednesday.
DC US District Judge Matthew J. Sharbaugh ordered Mario Bustamante Leiva, an illegal migrant from Chile, held without bail at a hearing after the feds argued he was a serious flight risk.
“When you start adding them up, it seems a little harder for me,” the judge said of Bustamante’s extensive criminal record — noting how the repeat robbery suspect had been “charged with serious federal crimes” as well as “at least three acts of robbery” under local statutes in DC, “has a history of non-appearance in court” and “no real ties to the community here” or to “any community.”
Sharbaugh also said Bustamante’s request for an emergency passport from the Chilean Consulate in New York in the days following the DC thefts raised further “concerns.”
The passport was not found on Bustamante when he was arrested.
“The court will order the defendant detained pending trial,” he ordered, before turning to Bustamante and explaining the process for further proceedings.
Bustamante, 49, was charged with wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and robbery after a booze-filled spree of purse snatchings on April 12, 17 and 20 — the last of which involved stealing Noem’s luxury shoulder bag at Capital Burger during an Easter outing with her family in downtown Washington, according to prosecutors.
He had been accused of a similar robbery in New York the month before, when he lifted a fanny pack from a Times Square dosa shop and used $1,200 from one of its credit cards — and had been convicted for stealing another $28,000 in phones, wallets and computers in London back in 2015.
That coupled with his lack of ties to DC and the passport request suggested Bustamante would “not comply with court orders” to attend further proceedings, Assistant US Attorney Benjamin Helfand argued.
“There are no conditions,” Helfand said, “to ensure Mr. Bustamante’s return to court.”
“Broadly, our primary concern is that there is no release plan,” he added before the ruling.
Assistant federal public defender Ubong E. Akpan argued back that Bustamante didn’t pose an immediate risk of flight or a danger to others and was seen “walking away, not running away” in surveillance footage after filching the pricey bags.
Asked later to address the emergency request for a passport, she said he never left the US for Chile, adding in an aside: “We’re not talking about, like, a mastermind situation here.”
Bustamante-Leiva, who wore a blue surgical mask and had to use an interpreting device to understand the proceedings, thanked the judge directly at the closing of the hearing after being explained how the pre-trial proceedings would function.
“Mucho gracias,” he said.
