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Bait Farmer Sentenced in Illegal Importation Case

John Fiore — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:58:33 +0000

A Wisconsin bait farming business that pleaded guilty to illegally importing fish has been sentenced to probation. Gollon Bait & Fish Farm was sentenced Wednesday to three years probation, fined $6,000 and ordered to pay the cost of additional monitoring of the health of bait fish by U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb. The business pleaded guilty to the charge on Oct. 29.

Federal prosecutors said Gollon received nearly $1.5 million in bait fish from companies in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Arkansas without acquiring the necessary permits or certificates showing they were disease-free. Two other Wisconsin bait companies that pleaded guilty were to be sentenced on Thursday and another was to be sentenced Jan. 8.

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Gotti Freed After Mistrial

John Fiore — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 04:01:14 +0000

A judge declared on Tuesday that the racketeering trial of John “Junior” Gotti, son of a famous crime boss, was a mistrial. The jury had failed to reach a verdict against him, making it the case’s fourth hung jury in five years. Gotti later told reporters that he was looking forward to spending time with his children. “It was difficult for me,” he said. “I can only imagine what it was like for them.”

“We are evaluating how to proceed and, in the near future, will inform the Court and the defense of our decision,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement.

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Indiana Woman Gets 125 Years, Videotaped Molestation

John Fiore — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 07:06:25 +0000

A babysitter from Indiana has been sentenced to 125 years in prison for videotaping herself performing sexual acts with children as young as two months. Samantha Light, age twenty-six, pleaded guilty to three felony counts of child molestation last month. During her sentencing on Wednesday, Light apologized and said that she had been coerced by her boyfriend. She says that while she appears happy on the tape, at the time she had felt like she was “dying inside.”

Both Light and her boyfriend, Stephen E. Quick II, have been held in custody since March following a three-year-old girl telling her mother she had been touched inappropriately by her babysitter, and that the couple had taken photographs.

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Petters Found Guilty

John Fiore — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 07:00:49 +0000

A jury has found the businessman Tom Petters guilty of twenty counts of fraud, conspiracy, and other charges, composing what prosecutors called a $3.5 billion Ponzi scheme. Petters had claimed that his subordinates carried out the scheme without his knowledge. He was convicted of wire fraud, mail fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering. U.S. District Judge Richard Kyle has not yet set a date for sentencing.

Prosecutors alleged that Petters performed the fraud scheme by using phony documents such as purchase orders and bank statements in order to trick investors into thinking that they were financing real purchases. These fake purchases would then be resold to discount retailers, such as Costco.

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Ex-bus Driver Convicted in Pedestrian Death

John Fiore — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 00:31:47 +0000

A former bus driver from Cleveland who was on her cell phone when her bus hit and killed a pedestrian in a crosswalk has been found guilty of vehicular homicide. A jury on Wednesday acquitted Angela Williams of a more severe charge of aggravated vehicular homicide – if she had been convicted of that charge, she could have received up to five years in prison.

Judge Shirley Strickland Saffold sentenced Williams to six months in jail, as well as a fine of one thousand dollars. Williams’ defense attorney says that six months is too severe, especially for a woman with no prior convictions.

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Virginia Court Upholds Power Line Plan

John Fiore — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:14:56 +0000

The Supreme Court of Virginia upheld permits on Thursday for the construction of a multi-state power line. The court rejected a claim by the opponents of the plan that state regulators had given up too much authority to the federal government. The court ruled in a unanimous decision that the State Corporation Commission’s approval of the Virginia section of the power line is a solution found acceptable to meeting the future demand for electricity in the northern areas of the state.

“We agree with the Commission that the record as a whole demonstrates that the Commission fulfilled its statutory obligation to consider alternative solutions to the need for the proposed transmission line,” Justice Lawrence L. Koontz Jr. wrote.

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Store Owes $200K for Failure to Accomodate Worker

John Fiore — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:29:34 +0000

A California court of appeals recently upheld a two hundred thousand dollar verdict in favor of an Albertsons grocery clerk who sued the company. The lawsuit was due to her urinating and menstruating on herself because her supervisor did not accommodate her disability. The court rejected Albertson’s argument that the failure to accommodate her was “trivial” because it was an isolated incident within a longer period of successful accommodation.

“As demonstrated in [plaintiff] A.M.’s case, a single failure to make reasonable accommodation can have tragic consequences for an employee who is not accommodated,” the panel said.

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Official Gets a Year in Prison for Abramoff Scandal

John Fiore — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:20:51 +0000

The former top procurement official in the cabinet of George W. Bush was recently sentenced to a year in prison for lying about his relationship with lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Paul Friedman, a United States District Judge, told David Safavian that he is being punished for lying to authorities investigating the Abramoff scandal.

Safavian gave Abramoff information about two pieces of government-controlled property. Safavian accepted a junket to go golfing in Scotland, which was paid for largely by Abramoff. He says that his life is in ruins because of the conviction. The indictment of the second person implicated in the scandal, ex-lobbyist Kevin Ring, ended in a mis-trial. Prosecutors said that Safavian has failed to show any remorse.

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Mexican Man Sentenced in Immigrant Hostages Case

John Fiore — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 16:00:59 +0000

A Mexican man was recently sentenced to twenty-five years in federal prison in connection with a group of men who held almost two dozen illegal immigrants hostage last year in a drop house in Phoenix. Prosecutors said that thirty-seven-year-old Evaristo Ortiz-Jimenez was sentenced Monday in a United States District Court. He had previously pleaded guilty to carrying and using a firearm in connection to a crime of violence.

Ortiz-Jimenez was part of a group of human smugglers that held at least twenty-three immigrants at gunpoint in May last year, and had reportedly beaten several and sexually assaulted at least one of them. Ortiz-Jimenez was the first of four to be sentenced in this case.

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