A twice-deported undocumented immigrant previously convicted of the DUI deaths of two teens in an Orange County freeway crash was sentenced on Friday, Jan. 23 to three years and ten months in federal prison for illegally reentering the U.S.
The early release last year of Oscar Eduardo Ortega-Anguiano after he served 3 1/2 years of a 10-year sentence for the Nov. 13, 2021 deaths of Anya Varfolomeev and Nicholay Osokin in a high-speed crash on the southbound 405 Freeway near Seal Beach Boulevard drew outrage from family members of the victims, criticism from federal officials and finger pointing amongst local and state agencies.
Ortega-Anguiano’s early release ignited that national uproar after it became clear that he had twice been deported to Mexico – only to return to the United States prior to the deadly OC crash.
Ortega-Anguiano has since been taken into federal custody on the illegal reentry charges, and U.S. District Judge John W. Holcomb during a hearing Friday at the federal courthouse in Santa Ana sentenced him to 46 months in prison and three years of supervised release.
But, as Ortega-Anguiano’s attorney noted, he also faces near-certain deportation after his prison sentence ends.
In a statement read to the court during the sentencing hearing, Anatoly Varfolomeev, Anya’s father, described how the death of his daughter and her boyfriend, Osokin, caused “the lights to go out of our lives,” leaving them in a state of “permanent grief” due to the actions of a “reckless and dangerous illegal alien criminal who should not have been in the country that day or any other day…
“I don’t have words that could describe the pain and suffering we have gone through,” the father said. “Our usual lives ended on that night four years ago. … We have been sentenced to this existence.”
Ortega-Anguiano’s immigration status — which the father said he didn’t learn of until last year, shortly before his release from state prison — “added an extra layer of anger and pain,” he told the judge. He compared it to his own immigration story, which the father said included assimilating into the country and following the rule of law.
“We came to the United States 35 years ago legally,” the father said of his family. “We are legal immigrants. He is not.”
Ortega-Anguiano, in his own statement to the court, told family members of the victims that he was “deeply sorry…
“I spend my days wishing I could go back and make better choices,” he said.
“It is etched into my conscience forever,” Ortega-Anguiano added. “I can never escape from it.”
Although he was born in Mexico and spent the first several years of his life there, Ortega-Anguiano said he was raised in the United States and is “American at heart.”
At one point during his comments to the court, Ortega-Anguiano said to the family members of the victims that “I pray for your forgiveness every day.” Sitting in the courtroom gallery, the father immediately responded, “Never.”
An intoxicated Ortega-Anguiano plowed his Volkswagen into a 2000 Honda occupied by Varfolomeev and Nicholay shortly before midnight. He ultimately pleaded guilty to gross vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence and a misdemeanor charge of driving without a valid license, and faced up to 12 years and six months in prison. A judge sentenced him to 10 years and 10 days in prison, and gave him 334 days credit for the time he spent in OC jail and for good behavior while in local lockup.
Last April, word of Ortega-Anguiano’s pending release drew widespread news coverage when it was spotlighted by federal immigration officials, who noted he had a lengthy deportation history. Ortega-Anguiano was removed to Mexico in 2016, caught presenting a counterfeit document while trying to re-enter in 2018 and again removed to Mexico.
And then, at an unknown date prior to the OC crash in 2021, he once again reentered the United States.
Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom publicly blamed Ortega-Anguiano’s early release in the fatal DUI case on the Orange County District Attorney’s Office and DA Todd Spitzer. Describing Spitzer as a “GOP DA,” the governor contended that Spitzer “gave him (Ortega-Anguiano) a plea deal instead of pursuing 2nd-degree murder.”
Spitzer fired back, noting Ortega-Anguiano accepted a court offer from a judge, not a plea deal backed by the prosecutor, and that his office had argued for a stronger sentence. Spitzer at the time said Ortega-Anguiano’s release was due to state laws that considered Ortega-Anguiano a non-violent offender, adding that “California’s creative concoction of good time, education and other credits has resulted in criminals being released quicker than ever before.”
The outcry over Ortega-Anguiano’s early release came as federal immigration officials were gearing up for what the Trump administration had promised to be the largest deportation program in American history. Several months later, aggressive immigration raids began in Los Angeles before expanding to other communities across the country, including in Chicago, Portland and Minnesota.
Federal officials, at the time of Ortega-Anguiano’s early release, were expressing frustration at sanctuary state restrictions that limit direct cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration officers. Local law enforcement officials say the restrictions prevents them from being dragged into policing federal immigration law, while federal immigration officials contend they would rather take undocumented immigrants into custody in a secure jail environment than out in the community.
But despite the sanctuary state restrictions, federal officials at the time Ortega-Anguiano’s release became public already had the ability to take Ortega-Anguiano into their own custody once he was let out of state prison.
In 2022, while Ortega-Anguiano was in state prison for the OC vehicular manslaughter conviction, federal prosecutors during the Biden administration had obtained an indictment charging Ortega-Anguiano with illegally being in the United States after being previously deported.
That indictment remained in effect as he was released from state prison, allowed federal law enforcement to take him into custody and held a maximum potential sentence of 20 years in federal prison.
In October, Ortega-Anguiano reached a plea agreement in which he admitted to being an “illegal alien found in the United States following deportation and removal.” Under that plea agreement, he faced up to ten years in prison and three years of supervised release. Along with his multiple removals and entries into the United States and the vehicular manslaughter case, the plea agreement cites previous convictions Ortega-Anguiano had for grand theft and vehicle theft in in 2005 in Los Angeles County, and false imprisonment in 2014 in Orange County.
Federal prosecutors in a sentencing brief suggested that Ortega-Anguiano should receive a three year, 10 month prison sentence, citing his agreeing to “fast track” a resolution to the illegal reentry case by agreeing to a plea deal. Ortega-Anguiano’s attorney, in a defense sentencing brief, suggested a three year prison sentence.
Ortega-Anguiano’s attorney wrote that, regardless of his legal status, Ortega-Anguiano is “undeniably a product of the United States.” His mother brought him to the United States when he was five years old, he grew up attending elementary, middle and high school in the United States and he raised his two children in the United States. When he was deported to Mexico in 2016 and 2018, Ortega-Anguiano “found himself in a country that was completely foreign to him, outside a few vague childhood memories, the defense attorney added.
The DUI crash caused by Ortega-Anguiano in 2021 left him in a coma for two weeks and caused extensive injuries that still leave him unable to walk more than a handful of yards unassisted, his attorney wrote. The defense attorney alleged that members of the Trump administration had turned Ortega-Anguiano’s case into a “political football,” forcing Ortega-Anguiano to be placed in what amounts to solitary confinement after a Fox News report about him was played in the housing unit where he was being held.
Orange County DA Spokeswoman Kimberly Edds, who attended the sentencing, said afterward that under current California law, someone convicted of driving drunk and injuring someone actually spends more time behind bars than a driver who kills someone while driving under the influence.
OC DA Todd Spitzer — along with his Los Angeles counterpart, DA Nathan Hochman — is currently co-sponsoring SB 907, a bill authored by Sen. Bob Archuleta (D-Pico Rivera) that would strengthen state DUI enforcement and sentencing laws, particularly for repeat offenders, Edds said.
That proposed bill includes “Kolya and Anya’s Law,” Edds said, which allows consecutive sentences for drivers convicted for multiple violations of vehicular manslaughter, which would mean longer terms in prison.
“Life is such a precious gift that must never be taken for granted, yet when a driver under the influence takes a life, California laws have fallen short in being able to hold those drivers accountable in a way that values the true tragedy of a death caused by drunk or drugged driving,” according to Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer.
“We as Californians must stand up against drunk and drugged driving by demanding full accountability for impaired drivers and the shattered lives they leave in their wake,” the DA added.
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