New York
38 women accuse James Toback of sexual misconduct in lawsuit
NEW YORK (AP) — More than three dozen women have filed a lawsuit in New York against writer and director James Toback, accusing him of sexual abuse.
The lawsuit, filed in state Supreme Court in Manhattan on Monday, comes after New York state last month instituted a one-year window for people to file lawsuits over sexual assault claims even if they took place decades ago, waiving statutes of limitations.
Accusations that Toback had engaged in sexual abuse going back years surfaced in late 2017, first reported by the Los Angeles Times as the #MeToo movement gained attention.
In 2018, Los Angeles prosecutors said the statutes of limitations had expired in five cases they reviewed, and they declined to bring criminal charges against Toback.
Information on attorneys or representatives for Toback was not available; he has denied the allegations made against him.
Fifteen of the women are named as plaintiffs in the New York suit, while another 23 are listed as Jane Does; in addition to Toback, the Harvard Club of New York City is also listed as a defendant, with some of the women saying they were abused there.
An email seeking comment was sent to the club.
Toback was nominated for an Oscar for writing 1991’s “Bugsy,” and his career in Hollywood has spanned more than 40 years.
Massachusetts
Clean energy grant fraud results in 7 year prison sentence
BOSTON (AP) — A Massachusetts man who participated in a scheme to defraud the U.S. government out of about $50 million in tax-free grants intended to fund clean energy projects has been sentenced to seven years in prison, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
Christopher N. Condron, 50, was also sentenced Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Boston to three years of probation and ordered to pay $8.7 million, the amount he actually made in the scheme that ran from 2009 until 2013, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney’s office.
Condron and others submitted fraudulent grant applications to the U.S. Treasury Department on behalf of four different companies, purportedly involved in either biofuel gasificaton or wind farm projects, prosecutors said.
The grants were from a program under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, meant to stimulate the U.S. economy after the 2008 recession.
Condron claimed the companies had either acquired, placed into service, or started construction of the projects at a total cost of more than $170 million, prosecutors said. Condron and others then sought to be reimbursed for more than $50 million based on those inflated costs, authorities said.
Condron submitted fraudulent documentation to an attorney who, in turn, submitted the applications to the Treasury Department, according to prosecutors.
Condron, of Acton, was indicted in 2017 and in September 2021 was convicted by a federal jury of conspiracy to defraud the United States and wire fraud. An email seeking comment was sent to his attorneys.
South Dakota
Former Yankton Sioux Tribe’s police chief charged with fraud
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — The former police chief of the Yankton Sioux Tribe in South Dakota has been charged by federal prosecutors with wire fraud and theft from the tribe.
Federal prosecutors allege that Chris Saunsoci sought wages both from the tribe and a local ministry that was providing flood relief. He allegedly held both positions between September 2020 and 2021 and sought wages for overlapping hours on 139 days. He was paid about $30,500 for both jobs on those days, according to court documents.
Saunsoci is also being charged with misusing an SUV that belonged to the tribe this year, the U.S. Attorney’s office for South Dakota said.
Saunsoci pleaded not guilty to the charges in November after he was indicted by a federal grand jury. An attorney appointed to represent him did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
He faces 18 counts of wire fraud and two counts of theft from the tribe. The wire fraud charges carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal custody, while the theft charges carry a maximum sentence of five years in custody.
Wisconsin
State files criminal charges against dairy farm
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — State prosecutors filed criminal charges against a Kewaunee farmer, agronomist and hauler who allegedly illegally dumped nearly 3 million gallons of excess manure that washed into tributaries of Lake Michigan.
All three defendants are charged with felony counts of conspiracy and fraud, the Wisconsin State Journal reported Wednesday.
According to a criminal complaint, the farmer had accumulated too much manure at his 2,000-cow dairy operation in late 2019 and hired a hauler to spread it in order to avoid a permit violation. The manure spread on the saturated fields exceeded what was allowed by the farmer’s permit, and the excess manure washed into tributaries of Lake Michigan, according to the complaint.
The complaint alleges that the person who spread the manure gave the farmer a false report saying he had spread much less.
DNR agents investigating the spills estimated there were about 3 million gallons of unaccounted-for manure spread and found records indicating that all three defendants were aware of the fabricated record, the complaint said.
None of the defendants could be reached for comment Tuesday, and no attorneys were listed in court records for them, the State Journal reported. The charges were announced by Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul.
Illinois
Woman gets 25 years for robbery in which boyfriend killed 6
CHICAGO (AP) — A woman who watched her former boyfriend kill six members of his family, including two young boys, at their Chicago home then helped him steal their property was sentenced Tuesday to 25 years in prison.
Jafeth Ramos, 25, pleaded guilty to armed robbery under a deal with Cook County prosecutors in which she agreed to testify against the former boyfriend, Diego Uribe Cruz, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
Uribe Cruz was sentenced to life in prison last month for six counts of first-degree murder in the February 2016 slayings in the victims’ bungalow in the Gage Park neighborhood on the city’s Southwest Side.
At Uribe Cruz’s trial, Ramos told jurors that she accepted the plea agreement in the hope that she one day would be able to again be with her son, who was barely a toddler when the couple were arrested in May 2016.
During that trial, prosecutors alleged he shot his 32-year-old aunt, Maria Martinez, after trying to rob her on Feb. 4, 2016, before he fatally stabbed her sons, ages 10 and 13, and stabbed or beat to death other relatives to make sure there were no witnesses.
Ramos declined to give a statement at her sentencing hearing.
As she was led out of the room, Ramos waved to family members in the gallery and made a heart shape with her hands. The family declined to comment afterwards.
New Hampshire
Man goes to trial on charges he ran unlicensed bitcoin business
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A New Hampshire man accused of running an unlicensed bitcoin exchange business catered to romance and imposter scammers who conned their victims into wiring him money that he shared as virtual currency with the criminals after taking his cut, a prosecutor alleged during opening statements in his trial Tuesday.
But Ian Freeman, who also is accused of money laundering, conspiracy, and four counts of tax evasion, actually warned people of scams and he helped businesses in the community, his lawyer said in the federal trial in Concord.
Some of what the prosecution is saying is “absolute nonsense,” defense attorney Mark Sisti said. Freeman has pleaded not guilty.
Freeman, of Keene, was arrested last year, accused of running the unlicensed business and avoiding taxes from 2016 to 2019, said Georgiana MacDonald, assistant U.S. attorney. She said Freeman designed his business so the ill-begotten gains could be hidden and the scammers could buy bitcoin anonymously.
She said Freeman operated by a “golden rule” that she described as: “’What you do with your bitcoin is your business. Don’t tell me what your plans are.’” She said the transactions were handled at bitcoin kiosks in bars, online, and through an app.
MacDonald said Freeman found himself in dispute with some banks over the transactions, so he hired people to open new accounts in the names of churches that acted as “little more than letterhead” for what he said were donations.
But Sisti said the church activity was “real,” and that Freeman’s activities ranged from helping the homeless in Keene to setting up an orphanage in Uganda.
“He helps,” Sisti said. “He doesn’t hurt.”
Freeman and five others were arrested in March 2021. Three pleaded guilty to wire fraud in opening accounts at financial institutions in their names or in the names of churches to allow someone to use the accounts to sell virtual currency. They received light sentences. A fourth pleaded guilty to operation of an unlicensed money transmitting business and awaits sentencing. Charges were dismissed against the fifth person.
Freeman, in his 40s, became active in the Free State Project, a 20-year-old political experiment that promotes a mass migration of 20,000 libertarians to New Hampshire. Fewer than 6,500 have arrived so far, but they have made inroads everywhere from school boards to the legislature.
Freeman, who changed his last name from Bernard, has run unsuccessfully for several legislative offices over the last decade. He hosts a radio talk show, “Free Talk Live,” and writes for the “Free Keene” blog. He also says he’s been a minister and co-funder of the Shire Free Church.
His trial is expected to last two weeks.
Indiana
Ex-prison worker faces 100-year sentence for knife attack
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A former Indiana Department of Correction worker faces a potential sentence of 100 years in prison under a deal in which she agreed to plead guilty to two counts of murder for a knife attack two years ago in which two people were killed and a third was wounded, a prosecutor said Tuesday.
Kristen L. Wolf, of Madison, also will plead guilty to attempted murder and attempted battery by means of a deadly weapon for the attack at an Indianapolis apartment that killed Victoria Cook, 24, and Dylan Dickover, 28, and seriously injured Elizabeth McHugh, Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears said.
Sentencing is set for Jan. 20.
On May 11, 2020, Indianapolis police responded to a home on the city’s west side where they found the three victims, Mears’ office said. Cook was declared dead at the scene, and Dickover and McHugh were transported to a hospital. Dickover eventually died from his wounds.
Witnesses told investigators that before the attack, Wolf, dressed in black and armed with a hunting-style knife, knocked aggressively on the front door. When Cook answered the door, they said, Wolf charged her and began to stab her before attacking the other victims.
During the attack, a DOC hat that Wolf was wearing fell off and was left at the scene, investigators said. The hat had a tag with the name “Wolf” written on it.
At the time, Wolf worked at a prison in the Ohio River city of Madison.
