The last defendant standing in a sprawling Orange County student loan fraud case has pleaded guilty, closing out a prosecution that once accused seven people of bilking thousands of borrowers nationwide out of millions of dollars. Paulina Francine Pacheco, who joined the Huntington Beach-based operation in 2017, was cleared of being one of the callers who tricked student loan holders, even as the case against her formally concluded.
Pacheco had been charged with identity theft, computer access and fraud, and grand theft, according to MyNewsLA.com. Before joining the firm, she had worked as a waitress for 10 years and reportedly drove a 2004 Volkswagen Jetta with 240,000 miles on it. Once inside the company, she studied the student loan forgiveness process as part of her training, and according to attorney Rob Harley, she obtained a borrower named Kristen Torres’ personal information with Torres’ consent — a detail that helped separate her case from the core fraud allegations.
Pacheco’s plea marks the end of a case built around Angela Kathryn Mirabella, the owner of the Huntington Beach company at the center of what prosecutors described as an alleged $6 million nationwide student loan fraud scheme. Mirabella’s operation, which included the Mirabella Group LLC along with Student Renew LLC and My Financial Solutions in Newport Beach, was investigated by California’s Department of Justice, leading to a September 2021 grand jury indictment, as detailed by CBS Los Angeles.
From an 87-Count Indictment to Misdemeanors
Mirabella was initially charged with 87 counts, including special allegations for money laundering exceeding $2.5 million and aggravated white-collar crime enhancements, according to Courthouse News Service. But the case did not end anywhere near that scale. At trial, a jury deadlocked 10-2 for guilt on some counts and 11-1 for guilt on others, splitting on 62 counts that included conspiracy, computer access and fraud, identity theft, grand theft and money laundering, per MyNewsLA’s reporting. Twenty-four felony counts were thrown out at trial altogether…