New York
Guilty plea from man accused of kidnapping girl, 9, from park
BALLSTON SPA, N.Y. (AP) — A man accused of kidnapping a 9-year-old girl from a state park in upstate New York pleaded guilty to two felony counts and faces 47 years to life in prison.
Craig N. Ross Jr. pleaded guilty Wednesday under a plea deal to first-degree kidnapping and predatory sexual assault of a child, according to the Saratoga County district attorney.
Ross was charged in the abduction of the girl on Sept. 30 from Moreau Lake State Park, located in a rural area about 35 miles (60 kilometers) north of Albany. A search involving more than 100 people ended two days later when state police troopers and an FBI SWAT team stormed a camper Ross was staying in. Rescuers found the girl alive in a cabinet.
Ross, 46, had faced additional charges of sexual abuse, assault and endangering the welfare of a child. His trial was scheduled to begin April 8.
He now faces 25 years to life in prison for first-degree kidnapping and 22 years to life for predatory sexual assault against a child when he is sentenced on April 17. The sentences will be served consecutively.
The break in the kidnapping case came after officers stationed at the girl’s home saw someone drop a ransom note in the family’s mailbox before dawn. State police matched fingerprints on the note to Ross, who was in a database because of a 1999 drunken driving case.
Minnesota
Federal judge affirms MyPillow CEO must pay $5M in election data dispute
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — A federal judge on Wednesday affirmed a $5 million arbitration award against MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell in favor of a software engineer who challenged data that Lindell said proves China interfered in the 2020 U.S. presidential election and tipped the outcome to Joe Biden.
Lindell said he plans to appeal. Asked if he can afford to pay, he pointed out that the breach-of-contract lawsuit was against one of his companies, Lindell Management LLC, and not against him personally.
“Of course we’re going to appeal it. This guy doesn’t have a dime coming,” Lindell said.
Lindell, a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the 2020 election, launched his “Prove Mike Wrong Challenge,” as part of a “Cyber Symposium” he hosted in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in August 2021. Lindell offered a $5 million reward through Lindell Management for anyone who could prove that “packet captures” and other data he released there were not valid data “from the November 2020 election.”
Robert Zeidman entered the challenge with a 15-page report that concluded the data from Lindell don’t “contain packet data of any kind and do not contain any information related to the November 2020 election.” A panel of contest judges that included a Lindell attorney declined to declare Zeidman a winner. So Zeidman filed for arbitration under the contest rules.
A panel of three arbitrators last April unanimously ordered Lindell to pay Zeidman $5 million, concluding that he had satisfied the contest rules. In Wednesday’s ruling, U.S. District Judge John Tunheim expressed concern about how the panel interpreted what he called a “poorly written contract,” but said courts have only limited authority to overrule arbitration awards. He ordered Lindell to pay up with interest within 30 days.
Lindell is also the subject of a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems in the District of Columbia that says he falsely accused the company of rigging the 2020 presidential election. He’s also the target of a separate defamation lawsuit in Minnesota by a different voting machine company, Smartmatic.
Lindell has conceded that he and MyPillow are struggling financially. Fox News, which had been one of his biggest advertising platforms, stopped running MyPillow commercials in January in a payment dispute. Two law firms that had been defending him against lawsuits by Dominion and Smartmatic quit last fall. He acknowledged that he owed them millions of dollars.
New York
Feds accuse alleged Japanese crime boss of conspiring to traffic nuclear material
NEW YORK (AP) — A leader of a Japan-based crime syndicate conspired to traffic uranium and plutonium from Myanmar in the belief that Iran would use it to make nuclear weapons, U.S. prosecutors alleged Wednesday.
Takeshi Ebisawa, 60, and his confederates showed samples of nuclear materials that had been transported from Myanmar to Thailand to an undercover Drug Enforcement Administration agent posing as a narcotics and weapons trafficker who had access to an Iranian general, according to federal officials. The nuclear material was seized and samples were later found to contain uranium and weapons-grade plutonium.
The nuclear material came from an unidentified leader of an “ethnic insurgent group” in Myanmar who had been mining uranium in the country, according to prosecutors. Ebisawa had proposed that the leader sell uranium through him in order to fund a weapons purchase from the general, court documents allege.
According to prosecutors, the insurgent leader provided samples, which a U.S. federal lab found contained uranium, thorium and plutonium, and that the “the isotope composition of the plutonium” was weapons-grade, meaning enough of it would be suitable for use in a nuclear weapon.
Ebisawa, who prosecutors allege is a leader of a Japan-based international crime syndicate, was among four people who were arrested in April 2022 in Manhattan during a DEA sting operation.
He has been jailed awaiting trial and is among two defendants named in a superseding indictment. Ebisawa is charged with the international trafficking of nuclear materials, conspiracy to commit that crime, and several other counts.
An email seeking comment was sent to Ebisawa’s attorney, Evan Loren Lipton.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said Ebisawa “brazenly” trafficked the material from Myanmar to other countries.
“He allegedly did so while believing that the material was going to be used in the development of a nuclear weapons program, and the weapons-grade plutonium he trafficked, if produced in sufficient quantities, could have been used for that purpose,” Williams said in the news release. “Even as he allegedly attempted to sell nuclear materials, Ebisawa also negotiated for the purchase of deadly weapons, including surface-to-air missiles.”
The defendants are scheduled to be arraigned Thursday in federal court in Manhattan.
Guilty plea from man accused of kidnapping girl, 9, from park
BALLSTON SPA, N.Y. (AP) — A man accused of kidnapping a 9-year-old girl from a state park in upstate New York pleaded guilty to two felony counts and faces 47 years to life in prison.
Craig N. Ross Jr. pleaded guilty Wednesday under a plea deal to first-degree kidnapping and predatory sexual assault of a child, according to the Saratoga County district attorney.
Ross was charged in the abduction of the girl on Sept. 30 from Moreau Lake State Park, located in a rural area about 35 miles (60 kilometers) north of Albany. A search involving more than 100 people ended two days later when state police troopers and an FBI SWAT team stormed a camper Ross was staying in. Rescuers found the girl alive in a cabinet.
Ross, 46, had faced additional charges of sexual abuse, assault and endangering the welfare of a child. His trial was scheduled to begin April 8.
He now faces 25 years to life in prison for first-degree kidnapping and 22 years to life for predatory sexual assault against a child when he is sentenced on April 17. The sentences will be served consecutively.
The break in the kidnapping case came after officers stationed at the girl’s home saw someone drop a ransom note in the family’s mailbox before dawn. State police matched fingerprints on the note to Ross, who was in a database because of a 1999 drunken driving case.
Minnesota
Federal judge affirms MyPillow CEO must pay $5M in election data dispute
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — A federal judge on Wednesday affirmed a $5 million arbitration award against MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell in favor of a software engineer who challenged data that Lindell said proves China interfered in the 2020 U.S. presidential election and tipped the outcome to Joe Biden.
Lindell said he plans to appeal. Asked if he can afford to pay, he pointed out that the breach-of-contract lawsuit was against one of his companies, Lindell Management LLC, and not against him personally.
“Of course we’re going to appeal it. This guy doesn’t have a dime coming,” Lindell said.
Lindell, a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the 2020 election, launched his “Prove Mike Wrong Challenge,” as part of a “Cyber Symposium” he hosted in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in August 2021. Lindell offered a $5 million reward through Lindell Management for anyone who could prove that “packet captures” and other data he released there were not valid data “from the November 2020 election.”
Robert Zeidman entered the challenge with a 15-page report that concluded the data from Lindell don’t “contain packet data of any kind and do not contain any information related to the November 2020 election.” A panel of contest judges that included a Lindell attorney declined to declare Zeidman a winner. So Zeidman filed for arbitration under the contest rules.
A panel of three arbitrators last April unanimously ordered Lindell to pay Zeidman $5 million, concluding that he had satisfied the contest rules. In Wednesday’s ruling, U.S. District Judge John Tunheim expressed concern about how the panel interpreted what he called a “poorly written contract,” but said courts have only limited authority to overrule arbitration awards. He ordered Lindell to pay up with interest within 30 days.
Lindell is also the subject of a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems in the District of Columbia that says he falsely accused the company of rigging the 2020 presidential election. He’s also the target of a separate defamation lawsuit in Minnesota by a different voting machine company, Smartmatic.
Lindell has conceded that he and MyPillow are struggling financially. Fox News, which had been one of his biggest advertising platforms, stopped running MyPillow commercials in January in a payment dispute. Two law firms that had been defending him against lawsuits by Dominion and Smartmatic quit last fall. He acknowledged that he owed them millions of dollars.
New York
Feds accuse alleged Japanese crime boss of conspiring to traffic nuclear material
NEW YORK (AP) — A leader of a Japan-based crime syndicate conspired to traffic uranium and plutonium from Myanmar in the belief that Iran would use it to make nuclear weapons, U.S. prosecutors alleged Wednesday.
Takeshi Ebisawa, 60, and his confederates showed samples of nuclear materials that had been transported from Myanmar to Thailand to an undercover Drug Enforcement Administration agent posing as a narcotics and weapons trafficker who had access to an Iranian general, according to federal officials. The nuclear material was seized and samples were later found to contain uranium and weapons-grade plutonium.
The nuclear material came from an unidentified leader of an “ethnic insurgent group” in Myanmar who had been mining uranium in the country, according to prosecutors. Ebisawa had proposed that the leader sell uranium through him in order to fund a weapons purchase from the general, court documents allege.
According to prosecutors, the insurgent leader provided samples, which a U.S. federal lab found contained uranium, thorium and plutonium, and that the “the isotope composition of the plutonium” was weapons-grade, meaning enough of it would be suitable for use in a nuclear weapon.
Ebisawa, who prosecutors allege is a leader of a Japan-based international crime syndicate, was among four people who were arrested in April 2022 in Manhattan during a DEA sting operation.
He has been jailed awaiting trial and is among two defendants named in a superseding indictment. Ebisawa is charged with the international trafficking of nuclear materials, conspiracy to commit that crime, and several other counts.
An email seeking comment was sent to Ebisawa’s attorney, Evan Loren Lipton.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said Ebisawa “brazenly” trafficked the material from Myanmar to other countries.
“He allegedly did so while believing that the material was going to be used in the development of a nuclear weapons program, and the weapons-grade plutonium he trafficked, if produced in sufficient quantities, could have been used for that purpose,” Williams said in the news release. “Even as he allegedly attempted to sell nuclear materials, Ebisawa also negotiated for the purchase of deadly weapons, including surface-to-air missiles.”
The defendants are scheduled to be arraigned Thursday in federal court in Manhattan.
