California
Feds: Man embezzled $1.2M from employer
BOSTON (AP) — A California man charged with embezzling more than $1.2 million from his Massachusetts-based employer over a 16-year period has agreed to plead guilty, federal prosecutors said.
Darrell Pike, 56, of Hesperia, California, embezzled the money from 2005 until 2021 while working as general manager of the California subsidiary of a Wilmington-based supply and service company, federal prosecutors in Boston said Monday.
He did so by submitting fraudulent invoices to his employer on behalf of a fake temporary staffing company for staffing services purportedly provided at the California location, adding the approving initials of company personnel to the invoices without their knowledge or consent, prosecutors alleged. The money was deposited into a bank account he controlled.
“Mr. Pike admitted his wrongdoing when he was initially confronted by his employer, and he did so again when subsequently questioned by the FBI,” his attorney, Brian Gurwitz, said in a statement. “He deeply regrets hurting the colleagues who trusted him during his career, and the pain this revelation has caused to his family.”
Pike agreed to plead guilty to wire fraud. A date for the plea hearing has not been scheduled.
Florida
Prosecutors: Trio defrauded county of $640,000
MIAMI (AP) — A former bank branch manager and two men with ties to a Miami-Dade County commissioner are accused of stealing $640,000 from the county, officials said.
They used their positions to apply for county grant money by using names of social service organizations, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said during a news conference on Monday afternoon.
“With these arrests we are alleging that these three individuals appear to have fallen prey to a temptation to steal Miami-Dade County money and property,” Rundle said. “It’s disappointing to see that there are still individuals who think that they can get away with stealing from the public.”
One of the men had served as chief of staff for Commissioner Jean Monestime, another was an aide to the commissioner and the third person was a manager at a Hollywood bank. Charges against them include racketeering, organized fraud, grand theft, and unlawfully filing a false document.
“These individuals leveraged a position of trust and position of authority to steal the public’s money,” said Miami-Dade Inspector General Felix Jimenez.
Rundle said there is no evidence that the commissioner knew about the scheme.
The two county employees defrauded the system for more than five years, applying for grants for cultural affairs, kids and seniors, Rundle said.
They received money through corporations and at least one foundation they set up for that purpose, their arrest reports said.
California
Man convicted of sexually assaulting homeless women
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A man who sexually assaulted three women at Northern California homeless encampments was convicted Monday of rape and other charges.
Layman McFadden, 40, was homeless when he attacked the women in encampments along the American River Parkway in Sacramento from September 2019 through July 2021, the county district attorney’s office said in a statement.
He choked, threatened and sexually assaulted the women, the DA’s office said.
He was arrested last year.
A jury convicted him of a dozen charges including forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, assault likely to cause great bodily injury, false imprisonment and making criminal threats.
Jurors also found that the crimes involved “great violence, cruelty, viciousness or callousness,” the DA’s office said.
McFadden could face up to 78 years to life in prison when he is sentenced on May 31, prosecutors said.
New York
New lawsuit seeks reinstatement of congressional district maps
A group of New York voters asked a federal court Monday to reinstate Congressional district maps tossed out by state judges last week because they were gerrymandered to favor Democrats.
The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan, argued that even if those maps were unconstitutional, as state appeals judges found, it is too late to draft new ones.
The plaintiffs pointed to a federal court order from 10 years ago that set New York’s congressional primaries on the fourth Tuesday in June, in order to make sure military and overseas voters had ample time to receive and return mail ballots.
A state judge last week ordered the state’s congressional and state Senate primaries delayed until Aug. 23 in order for new maps to be drawn, from their previously scheduled date of June 28.
The suit said that kind of delay isn’t allowed under the 2012 court order. Therefore, it said, there’s no time for a new map-drawing process, which has been given over to a single researcher, and the court must reinstate original maps drawn by the state Legislature.
“New York’s decision to wait several more weeks before adopting a new congressional plan as its federally mandated June 28 primary rapidly approaches is untenable,” the lawsuit says. “The state has an obligation to redistrict in a timely manner. Since it has failed to do so, this court must act.”
The plaintiffs were represented by Democratic attorney Marc Elias, who has pursued lawsuits over redistricting maps in other states.
Former Congressman Jon Faso, who has been advising GOP voters in their lawsuits, called the filing the latest in a series of “desperate actions taken by Democrats seeking to preserve their unconstitutional gerrymander of congressional and legislative districts in New York State.”
New York’s Court of Appeals last week rejected the Congressional and state Senate district maps drawn by the Legislature, joining lower courts which found lawmakers had improperly sidestepped redistricting procedures enacted by voter referendum in 2014.
The ruling was a blow to Democrats’ hopes of seizing as many as three U.S. House seats from Republicans in the 2022 elections by redrawing district boundaries to dilute GOP votes.
Lawyers for the state’s Board of Elections had been reviewing whether the 2012 court order referenced in the lawsuit would necessitate approval by a federal judge of any shift in the primary date.
That order, written when state politicians couldn’t agree on when to hold the Congressional primary, didn’t rule out an August date as long as there was federal judicial approval.
“This decision by no means precludes New York from reconciling their differences and selecting a different date, so long as the new date fully complies” with federal voting law, the order reads. “The court fully recognizes that a permanent primary date is best left to New York, but has acted as it must to preserve federally protected voting rights.”
Multiple states hold their congressional primaries in August.
California
Couple gets federal prison in forced labor case
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A Northern California couple was sentenced Monday to several years each in federal prison for conspiring to force a Guatemalan relative and her two daughters to perform long hours of physically demanding work every day of the week for little or no pay.
Nery Martinez Vasquez was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison and Maura Martinez to three years in prison after pleading guilty in August. They were each fined $25,000 and ordered to pay $300,000 in restitution.
The couple, both 54 and from Shasta Lake, California, near Redding, are naturalized U.S. citizens originally from Guatemala.
Federal prosecutors said they promised their relative a “better life” if she came to America in September 2016 with her two daughters, then ages 15 and 8.
But they then forced the three to overstay their visas and work at their restaurant, called Latino’s, and at their Redding Carpet Cleaning & Janitorial Services, which served area businesses including multiple car dealerships.
They threatened to have their relatives arrested for overstaying their visas and told the daughters they couldn’t go to school because they would be deported, prosecutors said.
They said Martinez Vasquez beat the daughters with a stick that had the children’s names and nicknames written on it along with the phrase “what goes up, must come down.”
“Forced labor, a form of human trafficking, is ... difficult to identify and investigate without cooperation of fearful victims who believe escape is not an option because of the lies they have been told by their exploiters,” Sean Ragan, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Sacramento Field Division, said in a statement. “This case highlights how such crimes may occur in public view at a legitimate business yet go unnoticed.”
Under a plea agreement, prosecutors dropped charges alleging that in 1997 the couple conspired to kidnap a 13-year-old girl from her Las Vegas home, then held her against her will for nearly two years while Martinez Vasquez repeatedly raped and sexually molested the girl.
Illinois
Man gets 62 years in mom’s death, dismemberment
CHICAGO (AP) — A judge sentenced a suburban Chicago man to 62½ years in prison Monday for the 2017 slaying and dismemberment of his mother whose partial remains were found in a lagoon.
Brian Peck, 60, was convicted in February of first-degree murder, dismembering a human body and concealing a homicide death. Authorities say he stomped on his mother’s head.
Cook County Judge Joseph Cataldo said Peck murdering his mother was disturbing enough, but more egregious was “listening to him testify how he sawed her into pieces, all with no emotion whatsoever.”
Cordaro described the crime as one of “irretrievable depravity,” the (Arlington Heights) Daily Herald reported.
Gail Peck, a dog lover, theater enthusiast and breast cancer survivor, died in the early morning hours of Oct. 25, 2017. Brian Peck then placed some of her remains into plastic garbage bags and threw them in to Lake Michigan, authorities said.
The next day, Peck purchased a luggage set and duffel bag, then put his mother’s torso, brick pavers and a towel into a large rolling suitcase, according to prosecutors. He placed other body parts, brick pavers and the saw authorities say he used to sever her limbs into the duffel bag, then threw it and the suitcase into Chicago’s Lincoln Park Lagoon.
Police recovered Gail Peck’s remains two days later after a fisherman hooked the duffel bag.
Maine
Man guilty after Capitol riot, another arrested
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A Maine native has pleaded guilty to a second charge related to his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Also Monday, the FBI arrested a Maine resident for charges stemming from the riot.
The Maine native who pleaded guilty was former Minot resident Mitch Simon, who told a judge on April 29 that he used a metal bicycle rack outside the Capitol to push police officers who were trying to control the crowd. He admitted guilt to a charge of disorderly and disruptive conduct at the Capitol, the Sun Journal reported.
Simon pleaded guilty earlier this year to a misdemeanor charge for demonstrating inside the Capitol as part of a plea deal. However, prosecutors withdrew their agreement due to new evidence that Simon played a larger role in the insurrection. Simon took a new deal on Friday.
Simon’s now a tree contractor in Georgia. He’s scheduled for sentencing Aug. 12 and faces eight to 14 months in prison.
The FBI said Monday that it arrested Joshua Colgan of Jefferson, Maine, pursuant to a warrant. Colgan was charged with disorderly conduct in a Capitol building and other crimes. It was unclear if he had retained an attorney.
