Nevada
Judge admonishes former federal official during sentencing
LAS VEGAS (AP) — A former federal official who pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in corruption and tax-related fraud cases has been sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison by a federal judge in Las Vegas who said the defendant’s conduct undermined democracy.
U.S. District Judge Andrew Gordon told 50-year-old Frederick Leavitt of Henderson that some people already distrust government and that the problem is worsened when public officials accept bribes and personally benefit from their government positions, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
Leavitt was sentenced Monday after previously pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit honest services fraud and to conspiracy to defraud the United States.
The sentence included an order that the former Bureau of Reclamation official pay $704,002 in restitution.
Prosecutors said Leavitt schemed to defraud the government while awarding government auditing contracts and by conspiring to file fraudulent tax returns for businesses while he worked for an accounting firm.
Massachusetts
Former teacher charged with sexually assaulting student
BROOKLINE, Mass. (AP) — A former public school teacher in Massachusetts has been charged with sexually assaulting a student multiple times starting when she was 12 years old in 2016.
Larry Chen, 36, of Newton, pleaded not guilty Tuesday in Brookline District Court to 54 charges including 18 counts each of statutory rape of a child.
Bail was set at $10,000 with GPS monitoring.
Chen asked the girl to come to his classroom at the Health School in Brookline after school, locked the door, and assaulted her, prosecutor Brittany Carney said in court. Police said the assaults continued until 2018.
Chen worked in the Brookline schools from 2013 until 2018, authorities said. He also operated a private tutoring business. Police started investigating in March when they first learned of the allegations.
His attorney, Jesse Grove, said there have been no prior allegations against his client.
The suspect’s mother defended him outside of court. “He’s got a good reputation in the town and this is just not fair,” she said.
Brookline schools Superintendent Linus Guillory encouraged anyone with information about the case to contact police.
“Our paramount concern is always the safety and well-being of our students, and school counselors are available to students as needed to provide support,” he said.
California
Former executive gets prison for $1 billion solar fraud
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A former energy executive in California who took part in $1 billion solar power fraud that bilked Warren Buffett’s company and many others was sentenced Tuesday to six years in federal prison and ordered to pay $624 million in restitution.
Robert A. Karmann, 55, of Clayton was the chief financial officer for DC Solar, a company based in Benicia in the San Francisco Bay Area that sold mobile solar generator units mounted on trailers.
The company marketed the generators between 2011 and 2018 as being able to provide emergency power for cellphone companies or to provide lighting at sporting and other events.
But the company executives started telling investors they could benefit from federal tax credits by buying the generators and leasing them back to DC Solar, which would then provide them to other companies for their use, prosecutors said.
The generators never provided much income, and prosecutors say the company ran a Ponzi scheme, in which early investors were paid with funds from later investors.
The company eventually stopped building the mobile generators altogether, and prosecutors say a least half the company’s claimed 17,000 generators didn’t really exist.
Among those suckered by the business were Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
DC Solar founder Jeff Carpoff was sentenced last November to 30 years in prison and ordered to pay $790.6 million in restitution for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering.
His wife, Paulette Carpoff, 47, has pleaded guilty to federal charges and will be sentenced in May.
Prosecutors said the Carpoffs used the money to buy and invest in 32 properties, more than 150 luxury cars, a subscription to a private jet service, a semipro baseball team, a NASCAR racecar sponsorship and a suite at the new Las Vegas Raiders stadium.
One other man was sentenced to three years in prison last year and three others pleaded guilty to criminal charges and await sentencing.
Missouri
Man sentenced in coronavirus aid fraud scheme
ST. LOUIS (AP) — A St. Louis man with a long history of stealing and fraud convictions was sentenced Tuesday to federal prison for fraudulently receiving $2.7 million in federal coronavirus aid.
Robert Williams, 58, was sentenced to 10 years and five months in prison after he filed about 30 fraudulent applications for aid under the Paycheck Protection Program, which was designed to help small businesses affected by the pandemic.
He also was paid a fee for helping other people file 23 fraudulent loan applications for the aid money.
Williams received the loans despite having a history of crimes dating back to the 1990s including passing bad checks and identity theft, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
Williams pleaded guilty in December to seven counts of bank fraud.
Federal officials recovered about $466,000 and seized a Maserati Levante and a Jaguar F-Pace, which Williams bought with the fraudulent loans, prosecutors said.
He was ordered to pay $1.2 million in restitution.
Tennessee
Judge rules in early voting lawsuit
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — The election commission in Tennessee’s largest county cannot be kept from opening only one polling location during the first days of early voting for a county election, a judge has ruled.
Judge James Butler declined to restrain the Shelby County Election Commission from implementing a resolution opening one downtown Memphis location on the first two days of early voting, which begins Wednesday for county primaries, The Commercial Appeal reported.
Five more sites are set to open on the fourth day of early voting, but no other sites are scheduled to be open until April 18, the newspaper reported.
Butler also ruled Monday that the commission does not have to open additional early voting sites this week, which precedes Easter Sunday.
Three Memphis groups had sued on claims that the commission’s decisions would disenfranchise minority voters during early voting.
Butler determined that he had heard insufficient proof to decide that the commission had violated the Tennessee Open Meetings Act or the state Constitution.
Colorado
Ex-Nevada inmate gets another life sentence
GOLDEN, Colo. (AP) — A former Nevada prison inmate was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison for sexually assaulting and killing a suburban Denver woman with a hammer in 1984.
Last week, jurors found Alex Ewing guilty in the death of Patricia Smith in Lakewood, eight months after he was found guilty of killing three members of a family in another Denver suburb six days after Smith was killed.
Ewing was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences for killing Bruce and Debra Bennett and their 7-year-old daughter Melissa in Aurora. Prosecutors said he was armed with a hammer and knife.
Ewing was identified as a suspect in both cases in 2018 through DNA evidence while in prison in Nevada, where he was convicted of attacking a couple in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson in 1984 with an ax handle in their bedroom. The results of a DNA sample taken from Ewing were linked with DNA eventually developed from evidence taken from the scenes of the Colorado killings.
Public defender Stephen McCrohan had asked the judge to consider the age of the case and Ewing’s good behavior in the time since the murder, saying he is not the same person he was, The Denver Gazette reported.
Washington
Man photographed in Pelosi’s office rejects plea bargain
WASHINGTON (AP) — An Arkansas man photographed with his feet on a desk in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot has rejected a plea deal over the federal charges against him, attorneys said Tuesday.
An attorney for Richard Barnett said during a pretrial teleconference hearing that the 61-year-old Gravette man was turning down an offer by the government to plead guilty to one charge in his case, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported.
Barnett has pleaded not guilty to federal charges including entering and remaining in a restricted building with a dangerous weapon, theft of government property and disorderly conduct.
Prosecutor Mary L. Dohrmann said that under the rejected agreement, Barnett would have pleaded guilty to obstruction of an official proceeding while six other charges would have been dismissed, the newspaper reported.
Joseph McBride, Barnett’s attorney, called the offer unreasonable and cited the sentencing guideline of 70 to 87 months for the charge, the newspaper reported. McBride also cited Barnett’s age as a factor.
Barnett’s trial is set to begin Sept. 6.
California
Firms to pay $1.8B for avoiding import duties
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Six Southern California companies have been ordered to pay $1.8 billion in restitution after evading import duties on aluminum from China and participating in a scheme to artificially inflate the revenues of a Chinese company, federal prosecutors said.
The scam involved raw aluminum extrusions that were spot-welded together to appear as finished and functional pallets, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California said in a statement Monday.
Prosecutors said the firms lied to U.S. Customs and Border Protection to avoid paying $1.8 billion in anti-dumping and related duties on extruded aluminum. Finished aluminum products such as pallets are not subject to the same duties.
The scheme was directed by Zhongtian Liu, the former president and chairman of China Zhongwang Holdings, Asia’s largest manufacturer of aluminum extrusions, prosecutors said.
A federal jury last August found all six California companies guilty of conspiracy, wire fraud and passing false and fraudulent papers through a custom house. The companies are: Perfectus Aluminium and Perfectus Aluminium Acquisitions, along with warehouse owners Scuderia Development, Von Karman, 1001 Doubleday and 10681 Production Avenue.
The metal was stored in the warehouses around Southern California, and China Zhongwang Holdings told investors that high volumes of the metal were being sold, prosecutors said.
In fact, the pallets were not sold and were kept in warehouses around Southern California and in New Jersey.
Liu, China Zhongwang Holdings and others were charged in Los Angeles federal court in May 2019. The U.S. does not have an extradition treaty with China, and the defendants have not appeared in court.
The aluminum seized during the investigation is estimated to be worth about $70 million, federal officials said.
