New York
3 convicted of murder after men were drugged and robbed after leaving nightclubs
NEW YORK (AP) — Three men were convicted of murder Monday in a conspiracy to rob men leaving Manhattan nightclubs and bars late at night, plying them with potent and dangerous drugs and ultimately draining their bank accounts once they were incapacitated.
The 2022 deaths of Julio Ramirez, a 25-year-old social worker, and John Umberger, a 33-year-old political consultant, were the result of “drug-facilitated thefts” and homicides, according to the medical examiner’s office. Ramirez died in a taxi of an overdose while Umberger was found dead a month later in a townhouse.
Lab tests showed both men had substances including fentanyl, cocaine and lidocaine in their systems when they died. Their families suspected foul play after discovering money missing from the men’s bank accounts.
“These defendants were motivated by greed, and their callous behavior left two young men dead,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr. said in a statement Monday. “I know the families who lost their loved ones are still suffering from so much pain, and I hope this verdict can provide at least some measure of comfort.”
The defendants — Jayqwan Hamilton, 37, Robert Demaio, 36, and Jacob Barroso, 32 — were convicted of murder, conspiracy and robbery and face 25 years to life in prison. All three were convicted of the death of Ramirez while Demaio and Hamilton were convicted in Umberger’s killing.
Prosecutors have said the group targeted numerous men at bars and clubs, befriending them and offering them drugs. When the victims became incapacitated, they were robbed of their wallets and cellphones, which were used to make purchases and digitally siphon money from their bank accounts.
Police said in 2022 that they had identified at least five killings, including the deaths of Umberger and Ramirez. The deaths were attributed to different groups that used similar tactics but seemed to be operating independently. While Bragg said at the time that the crimes did not appear to specifically target gay men, the neighborhood where the criminal enterprise was focused has a high concentration of LGBTQ+ residents.
Massachusetts
Former state senator sentenced for scamming unemployment funds in pandemic
BOSTON (AP) — A former Massachusetts state senator was sentenced Friday to 18 months in prison for scheming to defraud the state Department of Unemployment Assistance and collecting income that he failed to report to the Internal Revenue Service.
Dean Tran, 48, of Fitchburg, was convicted in September on 20 counts of wire fraud and three counts of filing false tax returns after a six-day trial.
After the Republican’s term ended in 2021, Tran fraudulently received pandemic unemployment benefits while simultaneously employed as a paid consultant for a New Hampshire-based retailer of automotive parts, investigators said.
“When Dean Tran took his oath of office as a Massachusetts State Senator, he willingly entered into a world of being in the public eye. He chose to violate the public’s trust not once, but twice by defrauding the government out of unemployment benefits and willfully omitting his taxable income,” U.S. Attorney Leah B. Foley said. “His fraud and calculated deception erode the public’s trust in elected officials and diverted money away from those who truly needed it.”
Tran said in a statement that he is planning to appeal his verdict “regardless of the sentence” Friday and insisted there was “no defrauding, stealing or scheming” with pandemic unemployment assistance.
“It was clear in the comments made in the courtroom that the driving factors behind my investigation were weaponization and lawfare,” he said. “I am innocent. This is nothing more than a politically motivated witchhunt.”
While working as a paid consultant for the Automotive Parts Company, Tran fraudulently collected $30,120 in pandemic unemployment benefits. Tran also concealed $54,700 in consulting income that he received from the Automotive Parts Company from his 2021 federal income tax return, according to prosecutors. This was in addition to thousands of dollars in income that Tran concealed from the IRS while collecting rent from tenants who rented his Fitchburg property from 2020 to 2022.
Along with his prison term, Tran was ordered to pay more $25,000 to the Massachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance, more than $23,000 to the Internal Revenue Service, as well as a $7,500 fine.
Tran was the first Vietnamese American elected to state office in Massachusetts.
Tran unsuccessfully challenged Democratic U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan for the congressional seat representing the state’s 3rd Congressional District in 2022.
In 2020, the Massachusetts Senate barred him from interacting with his staff except through official emails in the wake of an ethics investigation that found that he had his staff conduct campaign work during regular Senate business hours.
North Carolina
Judge: Racial bias tainted jury selection and death sentence for a Black man
SMITHFIELD, N.C. (AP) — Racial bias tainted the decision to strike Black people from the jury pool and to impose the death penalty in the 2009 trial of a Black man in North Carolina, a judge ruled on Friday, part of what he called “glaring” patterns of bias in a prosecutorial district outside the capital.
Hasson Bacote was among a group of 15 death row inmates whose sentences were commuted to life without parole last year by Gov. Roy Cooper in one of his final acts in office. That means the ruling won’t make a legal difference for Bacote. However, it could help several other death row inmates in similar circumstances, said Gretchen M. Engel, executive director of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation.
In addition to the problems that prejudiced Bacote’s trial, Superior Court Judge Wayland Sermons Jr. found that racial bias tainted jury selection and sentencing in other Johnston County cases.
Sermons found “glaring” bias in the fact that Black defendants in capital cases were sentenced to death 100% of the time while similar white defendants received a death sentence only 45% of the time.
None of those Black inmates in Johnston County have been executed, and North Carolina has not carried out an execution since 2006.
The judge said race was a “significant factor” in the decisions to seek the death penalty in the first place and in jury selection, when looking at other cases tried by Assistant District Attorney Gregory Butler as well as other death penalty cases in the same prosecutorial district, which at the time included Harnett and Lee counties.
In Bacote’s case, Butler struck 75% of prospective Black jurors and only 23% of prospective non-Black jurors. In Butler’s other cases, risk of removal from the jury pool by peremptory challenges was more than 10 times higher for Black candidates than for non-Black candidates, Sermons wrote.
Butler testified that he never struck a juror for a “racial reason.” Sermons found that unconvincing. In Bacote’s case, for example, Butler explained his removal of five Black jurors by citing their opposition to the death penalty. However, “Butler did not strike white jurors who expressed similar reservations, in some cases with nearly identical language,” Sermons wrote.
The U.S. Supreme Court made clear in 1986 eliminating potential jurors merely because of their race violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, which requires that people in similar circumstances be treated the same. However, jury selection bias claims are often difficult to prove.
The North Carolina Department of Justice, whose lawyers represented the state in Bacote’s case, have already “notified the court that we intend to appeal,” said Nazneen Ahmed, a spokesperson for Attorney General Jeff Jackson, who leads the department.
Bacote challenged his death sentence under North Carolina’s 2009 Racial Justice Act, which allowed prisoners to receive life without parole if they could show that racial bias was the reason for their death sentence. The law was repealed in 2013, but the state Supreme Court has ruled that it still applies to any prisoner who had a Racial Justice Act case pending at the time of the repeal.
During a two-week hearing last fall, Sermons listened to evidence that included statistical studies of how the death penalty is implemented in North Carolina and Johnston County in particular. In his Friday ruling, the judge said the weight of the evidence did not prove that racial disparities prejudiced death penalty cases statewide.
Alabama
Man pleads guilty to role in SEC social media account hack that led the price of bitcoin to spike
An Alabama man admitted Monday to taking part in a January 2024 hack of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission social media account designed to manipulate the price of bitcoin.
Eric Council Jr., 25, pleaded guilty to an identity theft charge in U.S. District Court in Washington, court records show. His sentencing is set for May.
Council was arrested in October and charged with helping to break into the SEC’s account on X, formerly known as Twitter, allowing unnamed co-conspirators to falsely announce the approval of long-awaited bitcoin exchange-traded funds, prosecutors said.
The price of bitcoin briefly spiked by more than $1,000 after the hacked account posted: “The SEC grants approval for #Bitcoin ETFs for listing on all registered national securities exchanges.”
Soon after the initial post appeared, then-SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said on his personal account that the SEC’s account was compromised. The price of bitcoin swung from about $46,730 to just below $48,000 after the unauthorized post hit on Jan. 9 and then dropped to around $45,200 after the SEC’s denial. The SEC officially approved the first exchange-traded funds that hold bitcoin the following day. Bitcoin has recently been trading around $100,000.
Council carried out what’s known as a “SIM swap,” using a fake ID to impersonate someone with access to the SEC’s X account and convince a cellphone store to give him a SIM card linked to the person’s phone, prosecutors said. Council was able to take over the person’s cellphone number and get access codes to the SEC’s X account, which he shared with others who broke into the account and sent the post, the Justice Department said.
Prosecutors said Council received payment from his co-conspirators in bitcoin and made about $50,000 as part of the scheme. Before his arrest, prosecutors said Council’s internet search history included “how can I know for sure if I am being investigated by the FBI” and “federal identity theft statute.”
3 convicted of murder after men were drugged and robbed after leaving nightclubs
NEW YORK (AP) — Three men were convicted of murder Monday in a conspiracy to rob men leaving Manhattan nightclubs and bars late at night, plying them with potent and dangerous drugs and ultimately draining their bank accounts once they were incapacitated.
The 2022 deaths of Julio Ramirez, a 25-year-old social worker, and John Umberger, a 33-year-old political consultant, were the result of “drug-facilitated thefts” and homicides, according to the medical examiner’s office. Ramirez died in a taxi of an overdose while Umberger was found dead a month later in a townhouse.
Lab tests showed both men had substances including fentanyl, cocaine and lidocaine in their systems when they died. Their families suspected foul play after discovering money missing from the men’s bank accounts.
“These defendants were motivated by greed, and their callous behavior left two young men dead,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr. said in a statement Monday. “I know the families who lost their loved ones are still suffering from so much pain, and I hope this verdict can provide at least some measure of comfort.”
The defendants — Jayqwan Hamilton, 37, Robert Demaio, 36, and Jacob Barroso, 32 — were convicted of murder, conspiracy and robbery and face 25 years to life in prison. All three were convicted of the death of Ramirez while Demaio and Hamilton were convicted in Umberger’s killing.
Prosecutors have said the group targeted numerous men at bars and clubs, befriending them and offering them drugs. When the victims became incapacitated, they were robbed of their wallets and cellphones, which were used to make purchases and digitally siphon money from their bank accounts.
Police said in 2022 that they had identified at least five killings, including the deaths of Umberger and Ramirez. The deaths were attributed to different groups that used similar tactics but seemed to be operating independently. While Bragg said at the time that the crimes did not appear to specifically target gay men, the neighborhood where the criminal enterprise was focused has a high concentration of LGBTQ+ residents.
Massachusetts
Former state senator sentenced for scamming unemployment funds in pandemic
BOSTON (AP) — A former Massachusetts state senator was sentenced Friday to 18 months in prison for scheming to defraud the state Department of Unemployment Assistance and collecting income that he failed to report to the Internal Revenue Service.
Dean Tran, 48, of Fitchburg, was convicted in September on 20 counts of wire fraud and three counts of filing false tax returns after a six-day trial.
After the Republican’s term ended in 2021, Tran fraudulently received pandemic unemployment benefits while simultaneously employed as a paid consultant for a New Hampshire-based retailer of automotive parts, investigators said.
“When Dean Tran took his oath of office as a Massachusetts State Senator, he willingly entered into a world of being in the public eye. He chose to violate the public’s trust not once, but twice by defrauding the government out of unemployment benefits and willfully omitting his taxable income,” U.S. Attorney Leah B. Foley said. “His fraud and calculated deception erode the public’s trust in elected officials and diverted money away from those who truly needed it.”
Tran said in a statement that he is planning to appeal his verdict “regardless of the sentence” Friday and insisted there was “no defrauding, stealing or scheming” with pandemic unemployment assistance.
“It was clear in the comments made in the courtroom that the driving factors behind my investigation were weaponization and lawfare,” he said. “I am innocent. This is nothing more than a politically motivated witchhunt.”
While working as a paid consultant for the Automotive Parts Company, Tran fraudulently collected $30,120 in pandemic unemployment benefits. Tran also concealed $54,700 in consulting income that he received from the Automotive Parts Company from his 2021 federal income tax return, according to prosecutors. This was in addition to thousands of dollars in income that Tran concealed from the IRS while collecting rent from tenants who rented his Fitchburg property from 2020 to 2022.
Along with his prison term, Tran was ordered to pay more $25,000 to the Massachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance, more than $23,000 to the Internal Revenue Service, as well as a $7,500 fine.
Tran was the first Vietnamese American elected to state office in Massachusetts.
Tran unsuccessfully challenged Democratic U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan for the congressional seat representing the state’s 3rd Congressional District in 2022.
In 2020, the Massachusetts Senate barred him from interacting with his staff except through official emails in the wake of an ethics investigation that found that he had his staff conduct campaign work during regular Senate business hours.
North Carolina
Judge: Racial bias tainted jury selection and death sentence for a Black man
SMITHFIELD, N.C. (AP) — Racial bias tainted the decision to strike Black people from the jury pool and to impose the death penalty in the 2009 trial of a Black man in North Carolina, a judge ruled on Friday, part of what he called “glaring” patterns of bias in a prosecutorial district outside the capital.
Hasson Bacote was among a group of 15 death row inmates whose sentences were commuted to life without parole last year by Gov. Roy Cooper in one of his final acts in office. That means the ruling won’t make a legal difference for Bacote. However, it could help several other death row inmates in similar circumstances, said Gretchen M. Engel, executive director of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation.
In addition to the problems that prejudiced Bacote’s trial, Superior Court Judge Wayland Sermons Jr. found that racial bias tainted jury selection and sentencing in other Johnston County cases.
Sermons found “glaring” bias in the fact that Black defendants in capital cases were sentenced to death 100% of the time while similar white defendants received a death sentence only 45% of the time.
None of those Black inmates in Johnston County have been executed, and North Carolina has not carried out an execution since 2006.
The judge said race was a “significant factor” in the decisions to seek the death penalty in the first place and in jury selection, when looking at other cases tried by Assistant District Attorney Gregory Butler as well as other death penalty cases in the same prosecutorial district, which at the time included Harnett and Lee counties.
In Bacote’s case, Butler struck 75% of prospective Black jurors and only 23% of prospective non-Black jurors. In Butler’s other cases, risk of removal from the jury pool by peremptory challenges was more than 10 times higher for Black candidates than for non-Black candidates, Sermons wrote.
Butler testified that he never struck a juror for a “racial reason.” Sermons found that unconvincing. In Bacote’s case, for example, Butler explained his removal of five Black jurors by citing their opposition to the death penalty. However, “Butler did not strike white jurors who expressed similar reservations, in some cases with nearly identical language,” Sermons wrote.
The U.S. Supreme Court made clear in 1986 eliminating potential jurors merely because of their race violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, which requires that people in similar circumstances be treated the same. However, jury selection bias claims are often difficult to prove.
The North Carolina Department of Justice, whose lawyers represented the state in Bacote’s case, have already “notified the court that we intend to appeal,” said Nazneen Ahmed, a spokesperson for Attorney General Jeff Jackson, who leads the department.
Bacote challenged his death sentence under North Carolina’s 2009 Racial Justice Act, which allowed prisoners to receive life without parole if they could show that racial bias was the reason for their death sentence. The law was repealed in 2013, but the state Supreme Court has ruled that it still applies to any prisoner who had a Racial Justice Act case pending at the time of the repeal.
During a two-week hearing last fall, Sermons listened to evidence that included statistical studies of how the death penalty is implemented in North Carolina and Johnston County in particular. In his Friday ruling, the judge said the weight of the evidence did not prove that racial disparities prejudiced death penalty cases statewide.
Alabama
Man pleads guilty to role in SEC social media account hack that led the price of bitcoin to spike
An Alabama man admitted Monday to taking part in a January 2024 hack of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission social media account designed to manipulate the price of bitcoin.
Eric Council Jr., 25, pleaded guilty to an identity theft charge in U.S. District Court in Washington, court records show. His sentencing is set for May.
Council was arrested in October and charged with helping to break into the SEC’s account on X, formerly known as Twitter, allowing unnamed co-conspirators to falsely announce the approval of long-awaited bitcoin exchange-traded funds, prosecutors said.
The price of bitcoin briefly spiked by more than $1,000 after the hacked account posted: “The SEC grants approval for #Bitcoin ETFs for listing on all registered national securities exchanges.”
Soon after the initial post appeared, then-SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said on his personal account that the SEC’s account was compromised. The price of bitcoin swung from about $46,730 to just below $48,000 after the unauthorized post hit on Jan. 9 and then dropped to around $45,200 after the SEC’s denial. The SEC officially approved the first exchange-traded funds that hold bitcoin the following day. Bitcoin has recently been trading around $100,000.
Council carried out what’s known as a “SIM swap,” using a fake ID to impersonate someone with access to the SEC’s X account and convince a cellphone store to give him a SIM card linked to the person’s phone, prosecutors said. Council was able to take over the person’s cellphone number and get access codes to the SEC’s X account, which he shared with others who broke into the account and sent the post, the Justice Department said.
Prosecutors said Council received payment from his co-conspirators in bitcoin and made about $50,000 as part of the scheme. Before his arrest, prosecutors said Council’s internet search history included “how can I know for sure if I am being investigated by the FBI” and “federal identity theft statute.”
