New Hampshire
Lawyer gets 4-year sentence on fraud conviction to get loans
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — An attorney convicted of bank fraud and other charges in lying to obtain millions of dollars in loans has been sentenced to four years in federal prison.
Joseph Foistner, 68, of Mont Vernon, New Hampshire, was a licensed attorney in Massachusetts when he used fraudulent means to apply for over $8 million in loans and laundered money between 2015 and 2018, the U.S. Attorney’s office said Monday. According to prosecutors, he submitted misleading documents suggesting he was operating a lucrative international firm when he actually had neither paying clients nor income.
Foistner was convicted in December of bank fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, and making misrepresentations during bankruptcy proceedings. He was disbarred.
An attorney for Foistner had asked for a sentence of home confinement, saying he didn’t have a criminal record and has health issues.
New York
Former London, Miami art dealer gets 7 years for fraud
NEW YORK (AP) — A former London and Miami art dealer who pleaded guilty to defrauding art buyers and others of over $86 million was sentenced Monday to seven years in prison.
Inigo Philbrick, 34, a U.S. citizen who previously lived in London, was sentenced in Manhattan federal court by Judge Sidney H. Stein. He also was ordered to forfeit $86 million.
Philbrick pleaded guilty last November to a single count of wire fraud for conducting a multiyear scheme to defraud individuals and entities in order to finance his art business. Prosecutors said he carried out the scheme by misrepresenting the ownership of certain artworks and by sometimes selling more than 100% ownership to multiple individuals and entities without their knowledge.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a release that Philbrick’s success as an art dealer came only after he collateralized and resold fractional shares in high-value contemporary art.
“Unfortunately, his success was built on brazen lies, including concealed ownership interests, fake documents, and even an invented art collector,” Williams said. “When the house of cards fell apart, Philbrick fled for a remote island in the Pacific, leaving many of his victims without recourse. For his extensive fraud, Philbrick is now sentenced to a substantial prison term.”
Artworks used in the scheme included, among others, a 1982 painting by the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat titled “Humidity,” a 2010 untitled painting by the artist Christopher Wool, and an untitled 2012 painting by the artist Rudolf Stingel depicting the artist Pablo Picasso, authorities said.
The scheme unraveled as jilted art buyers filed civil lawsuits, a lender notified him that he was in default of a $14 million loan and he stopped responding to legal processes, prosecutors said.
In 2019, his art galleries in Miami and London closed and Philbrick fled the U.S. before being arrested in June 2020 in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu, where he’d been living since October 2019, prosecutors said.
Georgia
Acquitted of murder, man sentenced for hiding body
OCILLA, Ga. (AP) — A Georgia man was sentenced to 10 years in prison Monday for hiding the death of a popular high school teacher whose disappearance baffled family, friends and investigators in her rural hometown for more than a decade.
Ryan Alexander Duke was sentenced in Irwin County Superior Court just three days after a jury acquitted him of murder in the 2005 death of Tara Grinstead. Duke testified that he gave investigators a false confession after a friend killed Grinstead. He was convicted only of concealing her death.
The 10-year sentence imposed by Judge Bill Reinhardt was the maximum punishment allowed. Duke has already served about half that time in jail awaiting trial.
A history teacher and former beauty queen, Grinstead vanished at age 30 from her home in Ocilla. Even as years passed, her family held out hope that Grinstead would be found alive until Duke told investigators in 2017 that he killed Grinstead and with the help of a friend burned her body to ash.
“Every day, they couldn’t find Tara,” Judge Reinhardt told Duke at sentencing. “And it is true that despite whatever your selfish feelings were for not coming forward, you had to the power to stop that pain for years.”
Five years ago, Duke told agents with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation that he had broken into Grinstead’s home in October 2005 to steal money for drugs. He said he fatally struck Grinstead when she startled him.
But Duke recanted his 2017 confession during his trial, testifying to the jury that he made it up under the influence of drugs and in fear of the real killer — his friend with a similar last name, Bo Dukes.
Prosecutors insisted Duke’s confession included details only the killer would know — such as Duke telling investigators he called Grinstead’s home from a pay phone after fleeing the house to see if she would answer. When she did not, he said, he returned to find her dead.
“He confessed because he got caught,” Grinstead’s sister, Anita Gattis, told the court during Duke’s sentencing hearing. “There is nothing sanctimonious about that.”
Investigators also found Duke’s DNA on a latex glove found in Grinstead’s yard. Still, his testimony sewed enough doubt with the jury that he was acquitted of all charges except for concealing her death.
Duke testified that his friend, Dukes, in 2005 woke him up inside the mobile home they shared and told Duke he had killed Grinstead. He testified that Dukes showed him Grinstead’s purse and wallet.
He said they both took Grinstead’s body to the pecan orchard and burned it. Investigators later found bone fragments at the site, but said DNA tests seeking to match them to Grinstead were inconclusive.
Dukes was called to the witness stand but declined to answer questions, invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Dukes is already serving 25 years in prison after being convicted in 2019 of concealing Grinstead’s death, giving false statements to investigators and hindering the apprehension of a criminal.
Massachusetts
DA: Officers in fatal shootings justified in use of force
BOSTON (AP) — Two police officers who killed suspects in two unrelated shootings in 2019 acted within the law and will not face criminal prosecution, Boston’s top prosecutor said Monday.
The officers’ actions in both cases “were lawful and reasonable exercises of self-defense and/or defense of others,” the office of Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden said in a statement.
“I am deeply aware of the impact these cases have on everyone involved,” Hayden said. “Our office moved forward with all these investigations with the utmost respect for all those affected by these traumatic events. We met with the families of those killed, the officers involved and their respective departments regarding these findings in advance of releasing them to the public. These were thorough, meticulous investigations conducted with one primary goal — to gather and review all the relevant facts.”
In one case, Boston Officer William Hull shot Kasim Kahrim in the city’s Roxbury neighborhood early Feb. 22, 2019, after Kahrim shot and injured Hull’s partner, Officer Mark Whelan, the prosecutor’s office said.
The officers spotted Kahrim in a parked, running vehicle with his head on the steering wheel and feared he might be in medical distress, the report said.
The investigation was conducted under Hayden’s predecessor, Rachael Rollins. The findings were reviewed and confirmed under Hayden.
“After a careful consideration of the facts and the law, I conclude that Officer Hull acted reasonably and lawfully when he discharged his weapon,” Rollins wrote in the report. “The facts clearly establish that Mr. Kahrim used deadly force upon Officer Whalen, by shooting at and striking him in his right hand, placing both officers in real and immediate danger of death or serious bodily injury.”
In the other shooting, which occurred on Aug. 4, 2019, in Revere, Everett Officer Alex Vieira shot and killed Oscar Ventura-Gonzales after a “dangerous high-speed” vehicle pursuit, according to the investigation.
As police were trying to box in Ventura-Gonzales’ vehicle, Vieira got out of his cruiser and ordered the suspect to stop several times, and the suspect drove toward the officer, the report said.
“Officer Vieira’s view that Mr. Ventura was trying to run him down was reasonable,” the report concluded. “Officer Vieira’s decision to fire a single round at Mr. Ventura was, therefore, legally justified as an act of self-defense.”
California
Man sentenced for tossing Molotov cocktails into home
SAN DIEGO (AP) — A Southern California man who tossed a pair of Molotov cocktails into a home with three children inside over grudge with one of their parents was sentenced Monday to five years in prison, federal prosecutors said.
Sylvester Andrews Jr. was convicted of charges including possession of an unregistered destructive device, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement.
Police and firefighters responded May 20, 2018 to reports of a vehicle on fire outside a home in National City. They found that someone had doused beach towels with a liquid — possibly gasoline — placed them on the vehicle and set them on fire, the statement said.
Police also determined someone had tossed two Molotov cocktails containing gasoline through a window into the home. Neither device fully ignited.
An investigation led by Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents found that Andrews had an unspecified dispute with an adult who lived at the home in San Diego County.
Andrews, 39, was linked to the crimes with surveillance camera footage, text messages and DNA evidence from the scene, authorities said.
“This defendant’s actions put three children at great risk because of a grown-up grudge, and the price for that is prison,” said U.S. Attorney Randy Grossman. “This is a fitting sentence for an offender who used an explosive device to settle a score.”
California
Man pleads guilty to setting fires in forest
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A man who set nearly a dozen wildfires in a Northern California national forest pleaded guilty Monday to being a serial arsonist.
Eric Michael Smith, 41, of Redding, entered guilty pleas to four counts of arson in a federal court in Sacramento but acknowledged setting other blazes in his plea agreement, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
Under the agreement, prosecutors will recommend no more than a 33-month sentence. Smith could have faced up to 20 years in prison if convicted of all charges.
Court documents indicated that between June 2019 and July 2020, Smith lit at least 11 fires in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, many of them in the early morning hours.
“Smith used hard-to-detect ignition sources, such as cigarette lighters and handheld torches, to ignite these fires in remote locations,” according to a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice.
The fires were quickly contained without causing any major damage or injuries but one shut down a freeway, authorities said.
Smith was arrested during an investigation into wildfires that had occurred over the past two years near a forest road north of Shasta Lake.
U.S. Forest Service and state fire investigators used hidden motion-detection cameras to identify a car and plant a tracking device on it, according to court records.
