A man and woman who created a false letter to be provided to a federal court pled guilty to obstruction of justice in federal court in Cedar Rapids.

Asa Adams, age 26, from Waterloo, Iowa, pled guilty on June 29, 2015, to obstruction of justice. Nicole Wells, age 36, from Waterloo, Iowa, pled guilty on July 6, 2015, to the same charge.

In plea agreements, Adams and Wells admitted that they worked together to create a false letter to be presented in federal court in a failed attempt to help Adams evade a revocation of his supervised release. Adams was convicted in 2011 of being a felon in possession of a firearm. After serving a sixteen-month sentence in federal prison, Adams was placed on supervised release on October 2, 2014. One of the conditions imposed on supervised release was that Adams not use controlled substances. His use was tested by random urinalysis. On December 24, 2014, Adams submitted a urine sample that tested positive for marijuana. In an attempt to evade having his supervised release revoked and being sent back to prison, Adams recruited his coworker and friend, Nicole Wells, to fabricate a false letter. The letter, purportedly written by a supervisor at the restaurant where Adams and Wells worked, falsely claimed another employee had brought in marijuana-laced brownies to work. The letter was not written by the supervisor and there were no marijuana-laced brownies.

Adams provided the false and fictitious letter to his defense attorney, who unwittingly filed it with the federal court as an exhibit. At a hearing on a petition to revoke Adams’s supervised release, however, the letter was shown to be false when the supervisor and employee who allegedly brought the brownies to work testified. The court found Adams had tested positive for marijuana because he had used marijuana, and sentence Adams to a year in federal prison for violating the terms of his supervised release.

Sentencing before United States District Court Chief Judge Linda R. Reade for the obstruction of justice conviction will be set after a presentence report is prepared. Adams remains in custody of the United States Marshal pending sentencing. Wells remains released on bond pending sentencing. Adams and Wells each face a possible maximum sentence of ten years’ imprisonment, a $250,000 fine, $100 in special assessments, and up to three years of supervised release following any imprisonment.

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney C.J. Williams and was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Court file information is available at https://ecf.iand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl. The case file number is 15-CR-42-LRR.