California
Ringleaders in massive COVID fraud extradited to U.S.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A Los Angeles couple who fled to Europe after being convicted of running a fraud ring that stole $18 million in COVID-19 aid money were returned to the United States to face prison, authorities announced Friday.
Richard Ayvazyan and his wife, Marietta Terabelian, were extradited from the Balkan country of Montenegro, where they were living in a luxury seaside villa before their arrest in February.
They arrived in Los Angeles on Thursday, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
While they were on the run last year, a court in Los Angeles sentenced Ayvazyan to 17 years in federal prison, and Terabelian to six years.
Prosecutors said the couple and six accomplices fraudulently applied for about 150 relief loans intended to help businesses and employees struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown.
They applied using fake identities or names belonging to dead or elderly people and foreign exchange students, prosecutors said.
To back up the applications, they submitted phony tax documents and payroll records for fake businesses to lenders and the U.S. Small Business Administration, prosecutors said.
The money was used for down payments on luxury homes in the Tarzana area of Los Angeles, suburban Glendale and the Palm Desert and to buy “gold coins, diamonds, jewelry, luxury watches, fine imported furnishings, designer handbags, clothing and a Harley-Davidson motorcycle,” said a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Ayvazyan and Terabelian were convicted in June 2021 of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and other federal crimes. Two months later, while free on bond, the couple cut off their ankle monitors and fled, leaving behind their three teenage children, authorities said.
Unemployment fraud was a nationwide problem during the pandemic, as benefit applications overwhelmed state unemployment agencies. Criminals were able to buy stolen identity data on the dark web and use it to file a heap of phony claims.
The federal Labor Department has said that about $87 billion in pandemic unemployment benefits could have been paid improperly nationwide, with a significant portion attributable to fraud. An Associated Press review in March 2021 found that estimates ranged from $11 billion in fraudulent payments in California to several hundred thousand dollars in states such as Alaska and Wyoming.
California
Coach sentenced for placing camera in locker room
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A former Southern California high school football coach who secretly photographed nearly two dozen students in a girls locker room was sentenced Friday to nine years and four months in prison.
David Arthur Riden, a former assistant varsity football coach at Los Osos High School in Rancho Cucamonga, also will be registered for life as a sex offender.
Riden, 53, was arrested last year after a camera disguised as a phone charger was discovered in a female restroom by another employee. Prosecutors said they believed Riden used the camera to secretly photograph 21 girls while they were in a locker room.
Riden pleaded guilty in October to charges of secretly photographing a minor, possessing more than 600 child pornography images and using a minor to produce such material.
Other counts were dropped in exchange for his plea. At the time, the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office announced it was satisfied with the outcome, which “ensures Riden is held accountable for his crimes and the victims will not have to endure a potentially lengthy trial and any further emotional trauma.”
There may be many more victims, according to lawsuits and damage claims filed against the Chaffey Joint Union High School District, which hired Riden in 2015.
Attorney Gloria Allred, who is representing nearly 50 alleged victims in a damage claim, said Friday that some parents felt the sentence was disappointingly short.
“Many parents and their daughters have been on an emotional roller coaster,” she said at a news conference.
Jordyn Stotts, a school alumna and one of Allred’s clients who publicly identified herself as a victim, said Riden’s actions “ruined me” and that she had lost trust in people and suffers from anxiety and depression.
“Once I was a girl who could take on anything,” Stotts said. “Now I am a girl who is scared and who doesn’t know what to do.”
Chaffey Superintendent Matthew Holton said in a statement that officials at the second largest high school district in California “remain deeply concerned” about the case.
“Our support for our students is unwavering and we will not tolerate any actions that infringe on their privacy,” Holton said.
New Jersey
Man convicted in attack, slaying on basis of race
FREEHOLD, N.J. (AP) — A man has been convicted in the 2018 killing of an emergency medical technician and freelance photographer in New Jersey after authorities said he targeted the victim because of his race.
Jurors in Monmouth County convicted 30-year-old Jamil Hubbard of Sayreville of murder Friday in the May 2018 attack on 56-year-old Jerry Wolkowitz near his Freehold apartment. The violence left Wolkowitz on life support for almost six months before he succumbed to his injuries.
Prosecutors said Hubbard told investigators that he had been sleeping in his car after a fight with his ex-girlfriend, and when he woke up he saw the victim walking nearby and decided to attack him because he was white. He said he probably would have left Wolkowitz alone if he was Black, authorities said.
Authorities said Hubbard punched and kicked Wolkowitz from behind, took his wallet and keys, dragged him into the parking lot and ran him over before fleeing in the victim’s vehicle. The Sayreville man was also convicted of bias intimidation, theft and motor vehicle theft, eluding and a weapons crime. He is scheduled for sentencing March 31.
Defense attorneys argued that Hubbard suffered from serious mental illness, including bipolar disorder, that prevented him from knowing what he was doing or appreciating its wrongfulness, but jurors rejected their plea for an acquittal on insanity grounds.
The Asbury Park Press said Wolkowitz worked as photographer, EMT and ambulance supervisor, and his work often appeared in the Asbury Park Press.
One of the victim’s sisters, Judy Marcus, speaking for the family outside the courtroom, called the case “a living nightmare for almost five years for all of us.” She praised the work of investigators and prosecutors that she said “gave us the ability to go on and end the nightmare.’’
Marcus said the ordeal was particularly difficult because both of their parents were Holocaust survivors and, for two years, while her mother was still alive, the family couldn’t bear to tell her that her son had been murdered, the Asbury Park Press reported.
Iowa
Hearing for teen who killed rapist moved to January
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An judge on Friday set a hearing for January to consider whether to order prison for an 18-year-old sex-trafficking victim in Iowa who killed her rapist and pleaded guilty last year to involuntary manslaughter and willful injury.
Pieper Lewis was sentenced Sept. 13 to probation for five years to be served at a Des Moines women’s shelter, but less than two months later she cut off the court-ordered GPS ankle monitor and walked away from Fresh Start Women’s Center. She was arrested five days later and put in jail, where she remains.
An Iowa Department of Corrections probation officer had asked the court to revoke the terms of her probation, and Judge David Porter set a hearing Friday to consider the matter. But after meeting briefly with lawyers, Porter scheduled a new hearing on Jan. 18.
Matthew Sheeley, a lawyer for Lewis, said they plan to contest the proposed revocation.
Assistant Polk County Attorney Meggan Guns said when a defendant challenges a proposed revocation, a judge typically sets a hearing where evidence can be presented, which is what occurred Friday.
Porter told Lewis at her sentencing hearing in September that he was giving her a second chance by allowing her to serve time at the women’s shelter and complete community service instead of prison. He said she wouldn’t get a third chance.
Lewis had faced a 20-year prison sentence in the June 2020 killing of Zachary Brooks, 37. Lewis was 15 when she stabbed Brooks more than 30 times in a Des Moines apartment. She initially was charged with first-degree murder, but prosecutors agreed to a plea deal dropped that charge.
Lewis has said that she was trafficked against her will to Brooks for sex multiple times and stabbed him in a fit of rage after he raped her again.
The Associated Press does not typically name victims of sexual assault, but Lewis agreed to have her name used previously in stories about her case.
Ohio
Closing arguments slated in trial in 2016 slayings of 8
WAVERLY, Ohio (AP) — Closing arguments are scheduled for the Monday after Thanksgiving in the trial of a man charged in the 2016 slayings of eight current and prospective members of another family in southern Ohio.
Prosecution and defense both rested their cases Friday for the Pike County trial of George Wagner IV. The 31-year-old took the stand earlier in the week to deny having had any knowledge of a plot to kill the victims and to say that he would have taken action to prevent the slayings had he known about such a plan.
In April 2016, seven members of the Rhoden family and the fiancee of one member were shot to death in several different locations. Wagner and three members of his family were arrested more than two years after the slayings, which authorities have said stemmed from a custody dispute.
Special prosecutor Angela Canepa has not accused George Wagner IV of shooting anyone but has alleged that he took part in planning, carrying out and covering up “one of the most heinous crimes in Ohio history.” The defense has argued that George Wagner IV is not like the rest of his family and had nothing to do with the killings.
Canepa has alleged that George Wagner IV was with his brother and his father when they drove to locations where victims were killed, went inside with the pair and helped his brother move two of the bodies.
George Wagner IV testified that he was at home sleeping on the night of the murders. He said he learned that the Rhodens were dead from TV reports, calling the news “heartbreaking.” On cross-examination, Canepa attacked his credibility, citing inconsistencies between his testimony and his 2017 statements to authorities.
His younger brother, Edward “Jake” Wagner, testified as part of a deal that spared him the death penalty. He said he killed five of the eight victims and implicated the brothers’ father in the other three slayings. He said he felt he had no choice but to kill the mother of his toddler daughter because he feared for the girl’s safety.
Angela Wagner, the mother of Jake and George, earlier pleaded guilty to helping plan the slayings but blamed the massacre on her husband, George “Billy” Wagner III. She said he believed the other family would seek revenge for the woman’s death and would kill Jake “if not all of us,” so the rest of her family “had to be murdered.”
George “Billy” Wagner III has pleaded not guilty and likely won’t go on trial until next year.
Those killed were 40-year-old Christopher Rhoden Sr.; his ex-wife, 37-year-old Dana Rhoden; their three children, 20-year-old Clarence “Frankie” Rhoden, 16-year-old Christopher Jr., and 19-year-old Hanna Rhoden, the mother of Jake Wagner’s daughter; Clarence Rhoden’s fiancee, 20-year-old Hannah Gilley; Christopher Rhoden Sr.’s brother, 44-year-old Kenneth Rhoden; and a cousin, 38-year-old Gary Rhoden.
