A man who used a computer to forge a casino player’s card in a fictitious name, testified in court that he has changed his life since that time. Cody Robert Langdon, age 33, was originally charged with a category E felony in connection with the forgery. He pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of attempted forgery by creation, alteration or deletion of data, after plea negotiations with the DA’s office.
Langdon’s crime actually occurred in 2012. The forgery did not come to light at that time. He was not charged until 2015. The case has taken over two more years to make its way through court to final sentencing. That turned out to be to Langdon’s advantage. It appeared from court testimony that Langdon has made good use of the time to turn his life around.
Langdon told District Judge Michael Montero that, since he was 13 years old, has been sick. “I have allowed drugs and alcohol to completely rule my life. My life was completely unmanageable. My decision making and every aspect of my life was completely different than it is now.”
Langdon said that changed when he received treatment for his drug addiction and alcoholism. He told the judge that since Dec. 7, 2016, he has been completely clean and sober.
He received treatment at Fairhaven House in Seattle. “That is why I moved to Seattle,” he said, adding, “now I do not miss an AA meeting. I’m very involved in AA.” Langdon testified that for the past almost two years he has had a very good job at a prestigious restaurant in downtown Seattle.
Speaking of the disaster of his life before, he described the charges in Winnemucca as “wreckage from the past that has caught up to me.” He said he has worked to make amends and done his best to correct past mistakes.
In response, Judge Montero asked whether any restitution had ever been paid to Model T Casino in Winnemucca for the amount his forgery cost the casino. Langdon said the police report listed $208 and said he was prepared to pay that. However, Montero said he didn’t have any paperwork offering proof of the $208 loss, which left him without authority to order the restitution.
The judge said that because Langdon had virtually no criminal history and with significant evidence that he had changed his direction, he was going to sentence him to a gross misdemeanor.
As Langdon is living in Seattle and other states are not willing to accept a probationer on an interstate compact for a gross misdemeanor charge, he will not have any term of probation. Rather, Montero fined him $2,000 in addition to a $25 administrative assessment and $153 for DNA collection and analysis.
