Massachusetts
Pair convicted for roles in online romance scams
BOSTON (AP) — A federal jury has convicted two people of playing a role in what prosecutors called “expansive online fraud schemes” that included romance scams and coronavirus pandemic unemployment assistance fraud.
Osakpamwan Henry Omoruyi, 37, and Osaretin Godspower Omoruyi, 36, were convicted in U.S. District Court this week after an eight-day trial of bank fraud, bank fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
The men, Nigerian citizens who lived in the Boston suburb of Canton, opened multiple bank accounts in the names of fake people using fraudulent foreign passports, prosecutors said. Their accomplices then sent the proceeds from romance scams, pandemic relief fraud and other illegal online schemes to those bank accounts, authorities said.
The defendants took in more than $1.7 million in fraudulently obtained money from 2019 until 2021 and transferred most of it overseas, prosecutors said.
Both men are being held pending sentencing scheduled for Sept. 22. The charges of bank fraud and conspiracy to commit bank carry a sentence of up to 30 years in prison. The charge of money laundering conspiracy carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
Idaho
Man pleads guilty to two hate crimes charges
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A man has pleaded guilty to hate crime charges for threatening to use his vehicle to hit an Idaho library worker who defended a transgender co-worker, as well as two women he believed were lesbians, according to court documents and the U.S. Justice Department.
Matthew Alan Lehigh, 31, of Oregon, on Thursday entered the plea to two hate crimes charges in federal court in Idaho, the department said. Lehigh had signed a plea agreement in the case last month. He faces sentencing later.
An attorney for Lehigh did not immediately return an email seeking comment sent after hours Thursday.
Lehigh acknowledged as part of the plea agreement that last October at a Boise public library he threatened and struck with a closed fist a library worker who is transgender. Another library employee tried to protect the co-worker and followed Lehigh as Lehigh fled to the parking lot. There, Lehigh got into his car and after the worker who followed him outside approached, Lehigh accelerated his car toward the person, who jumped out of the way, according to the agreement.
Days later, Lehigh was in a parking lot in his car at a Boise park and saw two women he “assumed, based on their appearance and dress” were lesbians, according to the document. He shouted threats and slurs at them and accelerated his car toward them. They jumped out of the way, the document states, but Lehigh’s vehicle hit the car of one of the women.
The Justice Department said Lehigh, as part of the agreement, also admitted responsibility for three other incidents, including setting on fire a pride flag that was on a same-sex couple’s porch.
New York
Teen guilty in high-speed crash that killed 4
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — A Buffalo teenager who was behind the wheel of a stolen SUV involved in a high-speed crash that killed four passengers pleaded guilty Thursday to manslaughter and other charges.
The 16-year-old appeared in Erie County Court as an adolescent offender. He is expected to be sentenced to 15 months to four years in prison.
A total of six teens were in the Kia Sportage when it crashed on state Route 33 on Oct. 24, Buffalo police said. The car had been reported stolen the previous night.
A 14-year-old girl and three males, ages 16, 17 and 19, died after being ejected through the glass sunroof when the vehicle slammed into a concrete embankment and flipped backward, authorities said. A second 14-year-old girl survived.
Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said at the time that the teens may have been participating in a TikTok challenge encouraging people to break into and steal Kia cars using cellphone chargers.
The driver pleaded guilty to four counts of second-degree manslaughter and single counts of assault and possession of stolen property, according to the Erie County District Attorney’s Office. Sentencing is scheduled for August.
Illinois
Police sergeant fired for role in botched raid
CHICAGO (AP) — A Chicago police sergeant has been fired for his role in a botched 2019 raid at the home of a Black woman who was handcuffed while naked after police officers were sent to the wrong address.
The Chicago Police Board voted 5-3 Thursday to fire Sgt. Alex Wolinski for multiple rules violations and “failure of leadership” in the raid at the apartment of Anjanette Young, according to a 31-page written ruling, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
Young, a social worker, was getting ready for bed in February 2019 when several officers serving a no-knock warrant stormed into her apartment on Chicago’s Near West Side searching for a man believed to have an illegal gun.
Police body-camera footage of the raid showed that officers handcuffed Young, who was naked when police arrived, as she repeatedly told them that they were in the wrong place. The city’s law department said Young was naked for 16 seconds but the covering officers put on her kept falling off before she was allowed to get dressed several minutes later.
The botched raid and the city’s handling of it prompted anger from clergy, lawmakers and civil rights activists who decried it as racist and an affront to a Black woman’s dignity.
Young later sued the city over the raid, resulting in the Chicago City Council voting unanimously in December 2021 to pay her $2.9 million to settle her lawsuit.
Then-police Superintendent David Brown brought administrative charges against Wolinski in November 2021, recommending that he be fired.
Wolinski, who had joined the Chicago Police Department in 2002, was accused of violating eight departmental rules, including inattention to duty, disobedience of an order and disrespect to or maltreatment of any person.
The Civilian Office of Police Accountability also called for Wolinski’s firing and for suspensions for several other officers present during the raid, although to date no other officers have faced Police Board charges for the raid, the Chicago Tribune reported.
While the incident happened before former Mayor Lori Lightfoot took office in May 2019, her administration later tried to block the police video from airing on television and rejected Young’s Freedom of Information request to obtain video of the incident. Young later obtained it through her lawsuit.
Alabama
Man sentenced to life for ’99 slaying of 2 teen girls
OZARK, Ala. (AP) — A man convicted of the 1999 slaying of two teenage girls in southeast Alabama was sentenced Thursday to spend the rest of his life in prison.
Circuit Judge William Filmore officially handed down the sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of parole to Coley McCraney. The proceeding was a formality since a jury decided the sentence in April and Alabama law requires a judge abide with the jury’s decision in capital cases.
A jury in April convicted McCraney of capital murder for the deaths of Tracie Hawlett and J.B. Beasley, court records show. The two 17-year-olds disappeared after setting off for a party in southeastern Alabama on July 31, 1999. They never returned. Their bodies were found the next day in the trunk of Beasley’s black Mazda along a road in Ozark, a city of 19,000 people about 90 miles (145 kilometers) southeast of Montgomery. Each had been shot in the head.
The slayings rocked the small southern city and sat for nearly 20 years without an arrest until police hired a company to run crime scene DNA through an online genealogy database. Police said they identified an extended family member and then asked McCraney to submit a DNA sample that they said matched the crime scene DNA. McCraney, a truck driver and preacher without a criminal record, was arrested in 2019.
The DNA evidence was the key piece of evidence for the prosecution. McCraney testified that he had sex with Beasley but did not kill her, news outlets reported.
WTVY reported that McCraney showed no emotion as he stood before the judge to hear the sentence.
Defense attorneys said they plan to seek a new trial based on alleged juror misconduct
“We believe that some of the jurors used social media and Googled certain aspects of this case,” defense attorney David Harrison said, according to the station.
Arizona
Death row inmate released after 29 years behind bars
PHOENIX (AP) — An Arizona death row inmate whose convictions and death sentence in the 1994 death of a 4-year-old were thrown out was released from prison Thursday.
Barry Lee Jones had spent 29 years behind bars for murder, child abuse and sexual assault convictions in the death of his girlfriend’s daughter. A Pima County judge ordered the release of Jones after approving a deal between his defense team and prosecutors, who said a medical re-examination of the case didn’t support a finding that Jones caused the girl’s injury. Jones pleaded guilty to a lesser murder charge.
In early May 1994, Jones drove the child and her mother to a Tucson hospital, where the child was pronounced dead upon arrival. Her death was determined to have been caused by a small bowel laceration due to “blunt abdominal trauma.”
Authorities had previously alleged that Jones had beaten and sexually assaulted the girl.
The Arizona Attorney General’s Office, which agreed that Jones’ first-degree murder conviction should be thrown out, said the evidence still supported a second-degree murder conviction because Jones, who was caring for the child at the time, had allowed her to die as a result of her injuries.
A federal judge called for Jones’ release in a July 2018 ruling, concluding Jones’ earlier lawyer had failed to adequately investigate whether the girl’s injuries were suffered during the time she was alone with Jones.
Experts had testified that the child may have been injured earlier. The judge’s ruling was upheld by an appeals court, though Jones remained in prison.
But the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decision a year ago, with Justice Clarence Thomas saying the federal courts are generally barred from taking in new evidence of ineffective assistance of counsel that could help prisoners.
With Jones still behind bars, his attorneys struck a deal with prosecutors for his release.
Under the agreement, once his convictions and death sentence were thrown out, Jones pleaded guilty to a second-degree murder charge in connection with his failure to seek medical care for the girl. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison and will be given credit for time served.
“Mr. Jones spent nearly three decades on Arizona’s death row despite compelling evidence that he was innocent of charges that he had fatally assaulted” the girl, said Cary Sandman, Jones’s attorney, who said his client didn’t sexually assault the child.
Now that Jones’ death sentence has been thrown out, Arizona has 110 people on its death row.
