PITTSBURGH—An inmate at SCI-Houtzdale, located in Houtzdale, plead guilty and was sentenced to six months behind bars for forging a judge’s signature, federal officials said.
Michael J. Kramer, 31, formerly of New Kensington, Pa., and currently serving a sentence for a state parole violation at SCI Houtzdale.
He admitted creating the fake document to release him with the judge’s signature at the prison law library, officials said.
Last month, Kramer was sentenced by Judge David S. Cercone to 20 years in prison, followed by five years of supervised release, on his armed bank robbery and firearms conviction.
Judge Arthur Schwab ordered that the six-month sentence for the forgery conviction should run concurrently or together with the robbery and firearms conviction
According to the evidence, these are the facts and circumstances surrounding this case:
- On April 4, 2014, a Records Specialist at SCI Houtzdale contacted the United States Marshals’ Office with concerns that the institution may have received a falsified “Order of Court” in which it was written that “Michael J. Kramer’s guilty plea be and as the same is VACATED.”
- The document was present in Kramer’s transport file. Kramer had recently been returned to Houtzdale from SCI Pittsburgh, and this folder would have returned to Houtzdale with him.
- At the time, Kramer was in state custody serving a parole violation and was due to be released from state custody in August 2014.
- A federal detainer followed him, however, because he also had pleaded guilty and was awaiting sentencing in federal court in Pittsburgh on charges of armed bank robbery, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and using a firearm in relation to a crime of violence.
- The Records Specialist at Houtzdale believed the Court Order purportedly vacating Kramer’s conviction was a fraudulent document because she did not observe a court seal, the order contained two different fonts, the order did not contain an original signature, and the order was folded six ways, as though someone had placed it in his pocket.
- The Marshals reviewed Kramer’s bank robbery court docket online and confirmed that no such order was actually filed dismissing his conviction.
- The Marshals also traveled to Houtzdale to interview Kramer, and Kramer confessed to the Marshals that he created this fake Court Order in the law library at the prison.