Kristi Noem, secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), during a news conference at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) headquarters in Washington, DC, US, on Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026.
Valerie Plesch | Bloomberg | Getty Images
A Chilean man who admitted stealing then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s Gucci handbag as part of a string of purse thefts in Washington, D.C., last year was sentenced on Wednesday to three years in prison, the Department of Justice said.
The crook, Mario Bustamante Leiva, 50, is residing in the U.S. illegally and will be subject to deportation at the end of his sentence, the DOJ said.
Bustamante Leiva was arrested in late April 2025, less than a week after he entered the D.C. restaurant Capital Burger and snatched the purse that — unbeknownst to him — belonged to Noem, who at the time was one of President Donald Trump’s most prominent Cabinet officials.
Noem was at the restaurant dining with her family for Easter. At the time of the theft, she was under Secret Service protection.
Noem was ousted from her post last month, in what has become a growing shake-up of Trump’s Cabinet.
with Kristi Noem’s purse and wallet.
Courtesy: MPD
Her Gucci bag contained credit cards and roughly $3,000 in cash when it was swiped, according to prosecutors.
Security cameras captured the theft, and later showed Bustamante Leiva at another restaurant in possession of Noem’s purse, wallet, and at least one credit card, which he used to make an unauthorized purchase, the DOJ said.
Bustamante Leiva was later charged with stealing purses in three separate incidents in April 2025.
He pleaded guilty on Nov. 21 to three counts of wire fraud and one count of first-degree theft.
“Bustamante Leiva came to Washington illegally to prey on citizens of the District,” U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said in a statement on Wednesday.
“He methodically targeted women at restaurants, stealing their purses, and monetizing the stolen cards within minutes,” Pirro said. “His pattern of theft ends here. He will serve his prison term and be deported.”
A prosecutor in Pirro’s office told U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden in a sentencing memo that Bustamante Leiva’s criminal conduct dated to at least the mid-1990s, in a “disturbing pattern” of entering various countries illegally, targeting “unsuspecting victims,” stealing from them, and then facing removal or incarceration.
Pirro asked the judge to sentence Bustamante Leiva to 30 months behind bars and three years of supervised release, saying his conduct was “egregious” and deserved “a sentence at the high-end of the guidelines.”
But McFadden gave him six more months than the term Pirro had requested.
Bustamante Leiva’s lawyer, A.J. Kramer, had asked the judge for a sentence totaling 15 months in a court filing that said the defendant has had a “very difficult life marked by fear, abuse and serious addiction.”
“All indications suggest that Mr. Bustamante Leiva’s conduct in this case is related to his
alcohol use and addiction,” Kramer wrote in a sentencing memorandum on April 17.
“Immediately after his arrest, Mr. Bustamante Leiva went through a period of serious and life-threatening alcohol withdrawal. But he has since become sober,” Kramer wrote.
His co-defendant Cristian Montecino-Sanzana pleaded guilty to two counts related to one of the three thefts that Bustamante Leiva admitted — an April 12 purse-snatching at a Nando’s restaurant.
Montecino-Sanzana was sentenced on March 13 to 13 months in prison and three years of supervised release. He also faces deportation at the end of his prison term, the DOJ said.
