New York
1 year, 1 day in prison for lawyer in police car firebombing
NEW YORK (AP) — A lawyer who purchased gasoline that another lawyer used in firebombing an unoccupied New York City police car during protests over George Floyd’s death in 2020 was sentenced Thursday to a year and a day in prison.
Colinford Mattis, appearing in federal court, was also ordered to pay just over $30,000 to the New York Police Department for the destroyed vehicle.
An attorney for Mattis declined to comment. Mattis is expected to start his sentence in March.
Mattis and Urooj Rahman were arrested May 30, 2020, as demonstrations and protests raged over the killing of Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis.
According to video footage, Rahman threw an incendiary device into the parked police vehicle, setting its console ablaze and causing severe damage.
Mattis was driving the minivan they were in when police arrested them, and authorities said they found a lighter, a Bud Light beer bottle filled with toilet paper and a gasoline tank in the back. They said Mattis bought the gasoline.
Initially, the two lawyers had faced much more severe charges and possible years-long prison sentences, but prosecutors reduced the charges and they pled guilty to conspiracy.
Federal authorities had asked for Mattis to be sentenced to between 18 to 24 months in prison.
Both Mattis and Rahman have been disbarred. Rahman was sentenced in November to 15 months in prison.
Michigan
Prosecutor: Don’t dismiss murder charge against ex-cop
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — A prosecutor has asked a judge not to dismiss a second-degree murder charge against a former Grand Rapids police office r accused of shooting a Black motorist in the back of the head during a struggle over a Taser.
Kent County Prosecutor Chris Becker filed court papers this week opposing a bid by an attorney for former Officer Christopher Schurr to dismiss the charge in the shooting death of Patrick Lyoya last April.
Becker said in court documents filed Tuesday that the district court did not abuse its discretion in finding probable cause to bind Schurr over on the charge. Therefore, Schurr’s request to dismiss the charge should be denied, the prosecutor said.
Kent County Circuit Judge Christina Elmore will hear both sides’ arguments during a motion hearing scheduled for 8:30 a.m. Feb. 2.
The case currently is set to go to trial March 13.
Attorneys for Lyoya’s family have filed a separate civil lawsuit against Schurr and the City of Grand Rapids.
New York
Jamaican cleric convicted in terrorism trial
NEW YORK (AP) — A Jamaican cleric accused of recruiting support for the Islamic State group was convicted Thursday of state terrorism charges after being extradited to New York City following an undercover New York Police Department sting that went international.
Abdullah el-Faisal is due to be sentenced next month after his conviction in state Supreme Court in Manhattan on counts including soliciting or providing support for an act of terrorism, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office said.
Bragg’s office said it was the first-ever state-level trial on terrorism charges. New York’s laws on terrorism were passed in the aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
El-Faisal, who had previously served prison time in Britain after being convicted of incitement and stirring racial hatred and had also been deported from Kenya, was arrested in his native Jamaica in 2017 and extradited to New York City in 2020.
Authorities said that beginning in 2016, an undercover officer in New York City posed as a would-be jihadist and started communicating with the cleric, who was living in Jamaica.
Prosecutors said el-Faisal, whom they described as highly influential, had supported the Islamic State organization for several years, encouraging violent acts in online lectures and calling for the creation of an Islamic caliphate.
Authorities said the interaction with the undercover officer, who ended up going overseas as part of the operation, led to the cleric giving out contact information for someone in Syria who would act as a conduit for connecting with the Islamic State. They said he also engaged in activities like trying to facilitate a marriage between the officer and a member of the militant group.
Michael Fineman, an attorney for el-Faisal, said he was “disappointed” by the conviction and planned to appeal. He said the cleric never actually agreed to help the officer travel to territory controlled by the group.
Federal officials have said el-Faisal’s sermons influenced people such as Faisal Shahzad, who tried to set off a bomb in Times Square in 2010, and Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called underwear bomber who attempted to blow up a transatlantic flight on Christmas Day 2009.
Florida
Fake nursing diploma scheme; 25 arrested
MIAMI (AP) — Federal authorities in Florida have charged 25 people with participating in a wire fraud scheme that created an illegal shortcut for aspiring nurses to get licensed and find employment.
Recently unsealed federal grand jury indictments allege the defendants took part in a scam that sold more than 7,600 fraudulent nursing degree diplomas from three Florida-based nursing schools, federal officials said during a news conference in Miami on Wednesday afternoon. Prosecutors said the scheme also involved transcripts from the nursing schools for people seeking licenses and jobs as registered nurses and licensed practical/ vocational nurses. The defendants each face up to 20 years in prison.
“Not only is this a public safety concern, it also tarnishes the reputation of nurses who actually complete the demanding clinical and course work required to obtain their professional licenses and employment,” said U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Markenzy Lapointe.
Lapointe added that “a fraud scheme like this erodes public trust in our health care system.”
The fake diplomas and transcripts qualified those who purchased them to sit for the national nursing board exam. If they passed, they were able to obtain licenses and jobs in various states, prosecutors said.
The schools involved — Siena College, Palm Beach School of Nursing and Sacred Heart International Institute — are now closed.
Some of those who purchased degrees were from South Florida’s Haitian-American community, including some with legitimate LPN licenses who wanted to become registered nurses, the Miami Herald reported.
“Health care fraud is nothing new to South Florida, as many scammers see this as a way to earn easy, though illegal, money,” acting Special Agent in Charge Chad Yarbrough said Wednesday.
He said it’s particularly disturbing that more than 7,600 people around the country obtained fake credentials and were potentially in critical health care roles treating patients.
The selling and purchasing of nursing diplomas and transcripts to “willing but unqualified individuals” is a crime that “potentially endangers the health and safety of patients and insults the honorable profession of nursing,” said Special Agent in Charge Omar Pérez Aybar. Pérez said investigators have not found, however, that any of the nurses caused harm to patients.
The students paid a total of $114 million for the fake degrees between 2016 and 2021, the newspaper reported. About 2,400 of the 7,600 students eventually passed their licensing exams — mainly in New York, federal officials said. Nurses certified in New York are allowed to practice in Florida and many other states.
Many of those people may lose their certification but likely won’t be criminally charged, federal officials said.
California
Man gets 13 years in teen’s fentanyl death
SAN DIEGO (AP) — A man who sold fentanyl-laced pills that killed a 15-year-old San Diego County boy was sentenced Tuesday to 13 years in federal prison.
Kaylar Junior Tawan Beltranlap, 21, of San Diego was sentenced for distributing fentanyl in the form of counterfeit oxycodone pills.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 50 times more potent than heroin and even a tiny amount can be deadly. It is sold in various forms, including blue pills designed to look like oxycodone, a powerful painkiller.
Beltranlap pleaded guilty in July, acknowledging that he used his Instagram account to work out a drug transaction with Clark Jackson Salveron, a sophomore at Coronado High School in Coronado, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
In his plea agreement, Beltranlap warned Salveron to take just half of a pill because it was “strong as hell,” the office said in a statement.
The deal was made on May 12, 2021. The next morning, the teenager was found dead in his bedroom in his Coronado home, prosecutors said.
The county medical examiner’s office determined that the teen died from acute fentanyl intoxication.
In the government’s sentencing memo, the boy’s mother was quoted as saying: “I will never recover from my oldest son being poisoned and taken from me.”
At his sentencing hearing Tuesday, a judge said Beltranlap went for “easy money” with “callous disregard for the poison he was putting into the community and into a very young victim,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
“Drug dealers are using social media to target kids,” said Shelly Howe, a special agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in San Diego. “Parents, be vigilant about checking your children’s social media, it may save their life.”
Fentanyl-laced pills are suspected in a number of overdoses of several teenagers in California, including the death last September of a 15-year-old girl in a high school bathroom in Hollywood.
Police said Melanie Ramos and a classmate bought what they thought was a painkiller off campus. Two teenaged boys were arrested in connection with her death.
Indiana
Judge convicts 16-year-old of murder in girl’s death
SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) — A judge found a 16-year-old boy guilty of murder Thursday in the asphyxiation slaying of a 6-year-old northern Indiana girl.
St. Joseph County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Sanford also convicted Anthony Hutchens of child molesting in the March 2021 death of Grace Ross, who was strangled in a wooded area near her home at an apartment complex in New Carlisle, west of South Bend.
The verdict came following a two-day bench trial in which Hutchens was tried as an adult.
His sentencing is scheduled for March 31. The sentencing range for murder is 45-65 years and for child molesting, three to 16 years.
Hutchens was 14 at the time of the girl’s death.
Chief Deputy Prosecutor Chris Fronk said the guilty verdict was “not a surprise, but a relief.”
Attorneys representing Hutchens did not speak to reporters after the verdict was read. Jeff Kimmell, Hutchens’ lead public defender, said in his opening and closing remarks that the case should have been tried in juvenile court.
During the trial, an Indiana State Police technician testified that DNA evidence collected from the girl’s clothing and body strongly suggested Hutchens’ DNA.
