Court Digest

Oregon
Man gets 3 years for operating illegal butane honey oil lab

BEND, Ore. (AP) — A Bend-area man has been sentenced to three years in federal prison for running an illegal butane honey oil, or BHO extraction lab, on rural Alfalfa-area property, authorities said.

U.S. Attorney Billy J. Williams said Tuesday that Jacob Robe, 31, also will face three years’ supervised release after his prison term, KTVZ reported.

“BHO extraction is a highly volatile and dangerous process that has resulted in explosions injuring and killing Oregon residents,” Williams said in a news release.

According to court documents, Robe and his brother grew marijuana, manufactured BHO and distributed it in other states for significant profit.

On March 27, 2018, an Oregon State Police trooper stopped Robe for a traffic violation near Klamath Falls. The officer recognized signs of drug trafficking and eventually found over $20,000 in cash, BHO and hallucinogenic mushrooms, court documents said.

The Central Oregon Drug Enforcement Team had previously received information regarding Robe and his brothers. Detectives later served a search warrant on the brothers’ property, finding an indoor marijuana grow with hundreds of plants, a closed-loop BHO lab, 18 pounds of BHO, 200 pounds of marijuana and 13 firearms, prosecutors said.

On Jan. 29, Robe pleaded guilty to conspiracy to manufacture and distribute marijuana. He also forfeited $23,000 in U.S. currency.

Virginia
Lawsuit: Pipeline could push 2 fish species to extinction

ROANOKE, Va. (AP) — Environmental groups have filed a legal challenge against the Mountain Valley Pipeline that says the project could push two endangered species of fish to extinction.

The Roanoke Times reports that the legal challenge was filed Tuesday in the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond. It involves the Roanoke logperch and the candy darter species of fish.

The route of the 300-mile long pipeline would go from northern West Virginia to southwestern Virginia and connect with an existing pipeline in North Carolina.

The coalition of environmental groups also asked the federal appeals court to review a recent biological opinion from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The agency had found that construction of the pipeline is not likely to jeopardize protected fish, bats and mussels.

The Sierra Club and other groups contend that the Fish and Wildlife opinion failed to adequately consider how fish would be affected by increased sedimentation caused by the steel pipe crossing streams.

A Mountain Valley spokeswoman said the “comprehensive” biological opinion exceeds regulatory requirements and addresses earlier issues raised by the court.

There has been a string of lawsuits that have long delayed work on the pipeline. Mountain Valley has said it plans to have the pipeline finished by early next year.

Texas
Ex-officer’s trial set for next year in woman’s death

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — A judge in Texas has tentatively set an August trial date for a white former police officer charged with murder in the shooting death of Atatiana Jefferson, a Black woman who was fatally shot through a window.

Judge David Hagerman on Tuesday said the scheduling may be fluid but that the case of former Fort Worth officer Aaron Dean “needs to be tried next year,” the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.

Dean resigned after he was charged with murder in the Oct. 12, 2019, shooting death  of Jefferson.

Jefferson had been babysitting her 8-year-old nephew at her mother’s home when a neighbor called a non-emergency police line to report that a door was ajar. Police have said that Dean opened fire from outside through a window after “perceiving a threat.”

A gag order has been issued that prevents prosecutors and defense attorneys from speaking publicly about the case. At Tuesday’s pretrial proceedings, Hagerman said he would likely consider a motion to change the venue of the trial from Tarrant County, which is home to Fort Worth.


New Jersey
Court considers mom’s conviction for killing son, 5

One of New Jersey’s most infamous cold cases entered another chapter Tuesday when the state’s Supreme Court heard arguments on whether a Florida woman’s 2016 conviction for killing her 5-year-old son 25 years ago should be thrown out.

Michelle Lodzinski was living in Port St. Lucie and had two older children when she was arrested in 2014. Investigators say they had long suspected her because of inconsistencies in her accounts of what happened to 5-year-old Timothy Wiltsey in May 1991, and eventually charged her after witnesses identified a blanket found near the boy’s body as belonging to Lodzinski.

Lodzinski had told police that Wiltsey disappeared while they were at a carnival in Sayreville. At the trial, prosecutors portrayed her as a struggling young mother who saw the boy as a burden, and they told jurors no one who knew Wiltsey saw him with her at the carnival that night. Lodzinski currently is serving a 30-year sentence.

Lodzinski’s attorneys have argued her conviction should be tossed because prosecutors never produced evidence that showed she purposely caused his death.

Wiltsey’s remains were found a few miles away the following year, and though a medical expert testified that in her opinion the boy’s death was a homicide, the manner in which he died remains unknown. No forensic evidence such as DNA or hair fibers connected Lodzinski to the blanket.

“There was no weapon, there was no DNA found, there was no cause of death proven by the state,” Gerald Krovatin, an attorney representing Lodzinski, told the court. “No theory of how Timmy died. The medical examiner found no trauma at all to his skeletal remains, and there was no proof of Michelle Lodzinski having any mental health or physical health issues that would have reasonably led to a conclusion that she was, as the state claims, at the breaking point.”

Defense attorneys also argued a mistrial should have been granted after the trial judge dismissed a juror during deliberations for conducting online research into FBI investigatory methods.

While admitting under questioning by Justice Barry Albin that prosecutors hadn’t presented evidence that Lodzinski had ever abused the boy or failed to provide care for him, Assistant Middlesex County Prosecutor Joie Piderit said the jury’s verdict was correct because of the totality of the circumstantial evidence.

“The state does not have to prove how Timmy died,” Piderit told the court. “It is clear the state did not know the mechanism of the death. The state, however, did prove that defendant knowingly and purposely caused the death or serious bodily injury resulting in death.”

A ruling could take several weeks or months.

Florida
Woman accused of scamming Amazon for $165,000

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — A 32-year-old Florida woman is accused of receiving $165,000 in reimbursements from Amazon for shipping costs that she never paid, sheriff’s officials said.

Investigators from the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office said Hoai Tibma took advantage of a loophole in Amazon’s policies by making it appear she had paid to return packages. Instead she was using old prepaid labels from the company.

She’s accused of second-degree grand theft and was arrested Oct. 23, an arrest affidavit said.

Between March 2015 and August, she was reimbursed $3.99 each for about 42,000 returns, the Tampa Bay Times reported.

Sheriff’s officials said she used 31 Amazon accounts, all linked to an address in a Tampa suburb. Eleven of the accounts had been suspended by Oct. 21, the date the affidavit was filed, the agency said.

According to the affidavit, Amazon could only produce pictures and documentation for around 5,000 labels dating to early 2020, the affidavit said. That was a loss of $20,273.

The sheriff’s economic crimes unit conducted the investigation. Amazon also conducted it’s own investigation.

Tibma faces up to to 15 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.

She was released from jail on a $7,500 bond. Court records didn’t list a lawyer for her, and a phone number was not available.

Massachusetts
5th former eBay employee pleads guilty for cyberstalking role

BOSTON (AP) — A former supervisor of security operations for eBay Inc.’s European and Asian offices pleaded guilty Tuesday to his role in a cyberstalking campaign that included having live spiders and other disturbing deliveries sent to a Massachusetts couple who published an online newsletter critical of the online auction site.

Philip Cooke, 55, of San Jose, California, a former police captain, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and conspiracy to tamper with witnesses, according to a statement from federal prosecutors in Boston. He is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 24. Each charge carries a maximum of five years in prison.

His attorney declined to comment when reached by The Associated Press.

He is the fifth former eBay employee out of seven charged in the case to plead guilty.

The harassment campaign targeting the Natick couple started in August 2019 and included three distinct parts, prosecutors said.

One part included disturbing deliveries to the couple’s home, including a preserved fetal pig and a book on surviving the loss of a spouse. The second phase included private Twitter messages and public tweets criticizing the newsletter’s content, the posting of their home address, and threats to visit the victims, authorities said.

The third phase involved surveillance, which the victims spotted and reported to local police, who started the investigation, prosecutors said.

The defendants then allegedly tried to stymie that investigation, including deleting digital evidence, prosecutors said.

The victims were targeted after their newsletter published an article about a lawsuit filed by eBay that accused Amazon of poaching its sellers, investigators said.

San Jose, California-based eBay fired the employees.

New York
Change of plea scheduled in case involving Giuliani

NEW YORK (AP) — A change-of-plea hearing is set for Thursday for a man charged with conspiring with associates of Rudy Giuliani, one of President Donald Trump’s lawyers, to make illegal campaign contributions.
The hearing for David Correia, scheduled to occur by video, was announced in a filing Wednesday in Manhattan federal court.

If it occurs as planned, Correia would become the first conviction among four men charged last year with using straw donors to make illegal contributions to politicians they thought could aid their political and business interests.

Messages for comment were left with his lawyers Wednesday. A spokesperson for prosecutors declined to comment.

In September, an updated indictment charged Correia and co-defendant Lev Parnas with defrauding investors in a business called Fraud Guarantee. A superseding indictment also charged him with additional campaign finance violations.

Parnas and Correia also hired Giuliani, a Republican former New York City mayor, to consult with Fraud Guarantee. Giuliani has said he was promised $500,000 to work with the company.

The indictment said Correia misled investors about the strength of the company and a business model and in some cases used the invested money for personal expenses.

Two other men who have pleaded not guilty in the case, Parnas and Igor Fruman, worked with Giuliani to try to get Ukrainian officials to investigate the son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden while Parnas and Fruman allegedly made sizable illegal campaign contributions to U.S. candidates. Giuliani has said he knew nothing about the donations.

The Ukrainian quest was a focus of Trump’s impeachment proceedings earlier this year. The president’s efforts to press Ukraine for an investigation of the Bidens led the House to impeach Trump, though he was acquitted by the Senate.

Correia is an American-born businessman who owns a home with his wife in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Last month, one of his lawyers asked to leave the case and said Correia hadn’t paid him.