Alabama
Deputies indicted on charges of assaulting man who later died of hypothermia in jail
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Two Alabama sheriff’s deputies were indicted in February on charges of using excessive force against a man who later died of sepsis and hypothermia in a local jail, according to a court filings made public on Tuesday.
A federal grand jury indicted Walker County sheriff’s deputies Carl Carpenter and James Handley with felony deprivation of rights for allegedly assaulting Tony Mitchell in 2023, who died two weeks later when he was detained in a concrete cell covered in feces with no toilet or access to medical attention. At least 10 jail employees have pleaded guilty to charges related to the death of the 33-year-old.
The two sheriff’s deputies arrested Mitchell on Jan. 12, 2023, after a relative asked for a welfare check on him. The sheriff’s office said at the time that Mitchell was talking about portals to hell and asserted that he had fired a weapon at officers.
Carpenter is accused of stepping on Mitchell while he was handcuffed until he couldn’t walk. Then both deputies allegedly dragged Mitchell on the ground, kicked him and slammed him onto the police car. Handley is accused of also accused of witness tampering for allegedly lying to a separate grand jury about the incident in August.
Neither Carpenter nor Handley is accused of inflicting injuries that directly contributed to Mitchell’s death.
Plea documents in the 10 other cases have detailed a local law enforcement culture that rewarded officers who abused incarcerated people, including Mitchell. One plea document said that officers intentionally kept the conditions in a local Alabama jail “as filthy as possible” to convince county commissioners to increase salaries and the budget of the jail.
The deputies indicted on Tuesday are the first Walker County Sheriff’s Office employees charged who were not assigned to work in the jail. Both deputies have arraignment dates set for March.
Florida
State AG’s office is investigating Tate brothers
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Florida’s attorney general announced Tuesday that his office has opened a criminal investigation into Andrew and Tristan Tate, who are charged with human trafficking in Romania, days after they returned to the U.S.
Attorney General James Uthmeier announced on social media that he directed his office to work with law enforcement to conduct a preliminary inquiry into the Tate brothers.
“Based on a thorough review of the evidence, I’ve directed the Office of Statewide Prosecution to execute search warrants and issue subpoenas in the now-active criminal investigation into the Tate brothers,” Uthmeier said.
After the Tates landed in Fort Lauderdale last Thursday, Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters that the brothers weren’t welcome in Florida and that he would have the attorney general examine whether the state may have any jurisdiction over their alleged crimes.
During an appearance Monday on the PPD Podcast, Andrew Tate said the governor was caving to media pressure. Tate said he has a U.S. passport and a right to visit his home country. He said he has broken no laws and that he has never even been tried, let alone convicted, of a crime.
The Tates, who are dual U.S.-British citizens, were arrested in late 2022 and formally indicted last year in Romania on charges they participated in a criminal ring that lured women to that country, where they were sexually exploited. Andrew Tate was also charged with rape. They deny the allegations.
Andrew Tate, 38, is a former professional kickboxer and self-described misogynist who is a hugely successful social media figure, attracting millions of followers, many of them young men and schoolchildren drawn in by the luxurious lifestyle the influencer projects online. He and his 36-year-old brother, Tristan, are vocal supporters of President Donald Trump.
Andrew Tate previously was banned from TikTok, YouTube and Facebook for hate speech and his misogynistic comments, including that women should bear responsibility for getting sexually assaulted.
The Tates left Romania after Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu said this month that a Trump administration official expressed interest in the brothers’ case at the recent Munich Security Conference.
Idaho
Judge tells attorneys to stop being so secretive in quadruple murder case
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — An Idaho judge is warning attorneys to quit filing so many sealed documents in the murder case of a man accused in the stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students.
Bryan Kohberger’s defense attorneys and prosecutors have made secrecy the norm rather than an exception, 4th District Judge Steven Hippler wrote in a court order on Monday.
“This runs counter to the public’s First Amendment rights to know what is going on in its courts,” Hippler wrote. He ordered the attorneys to use the least restrictive steps necessary to protect confidential information in the case, such as redacting some lines or using initials instead of an individual’s full name.
Kohberger is charged with four counts of murder in the deaths of Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves, students who were killed in the early morning of Nov. 13, 2022, at a rental home near their campus in Moscow, Idaho. When asked to enter a plea last year, Kohberger stood silent, prompting a judge to enter a not-guilty plea on his behalf. Prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty if Kohberger is convicted.
Hippler’s directive came as a flurry of new motions were filed ahead of the August trial, including a sealed defense motion to take the death penalty off the table that cited autism spectrum disorder.
Other sealed motions include one on whether the terms “psychopath” or “sociopath” can be used during the trial, and one from prosecutors about the presence of immediate family members in the courtroom during the trial. Some of the currently sealed documents will be redacted and made public, and others will remain sealed, the judge ruled.
A trial is expected to begin Aug. 11 and last for more than three months.
New York
Cybercrime crew stole then resold hundreds of tickets to Swift concerts, prosecutors say
NEW YORK (AP) — A cybercrime crew stole then resold more than 900 digital tickets to Taylor Swift concerts and other pricey events on StubHub, according to prosecutors in New York.
The international scam involved people working in Jamaica for a firm contracted by the online ticket marketplace, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said Monday.
The contractors stole the URLs of tickets purchased on StubHub and emailed them to others in New York, who then downloaded and resold them on StubHub at exorbitant prices, she said.
The crew raked in more than $600,000 in profits over roughly a year between June 2022 and July 2023, according to prosecutors.
The majority of the stolen tickets were for Swift’s Eras Tour, but the thieves also boosted ones for Adele and Ed Sheeran concerts, NBA games and the U.S. Open Tennis Championships.
Katz added that investigators are still determining the extent of the operation, including other potential co-conspirators.
Two of those involved, Tyrone Rose and Shamara Simmons, were arrested and charged last Thursday with grand larceny, computer tampering and conspiracy charges, Katz’s office said.
Rose, 20, was among those in Jamaica who re-directed purchased tickets to the emails of Simmons, 31, and another accomplice based in the New York City borough of Queens, according to prosecutors.
Rose was apprehended while he was visiting New York and was ordered to surrender his passport, Katz’s office said Tuesday. He and Simmons pleaded not guilty and were released pending their next court date Friday.
The public defender’s office representing Rose declined to comment, and lawyers for Simmons didn’t immediately respond Tuesday.
StubHub said Tuesday that it had discovered the criminal scheme and reported it to authorities and its third-party customer service vendor.
The company said it has since terminated its relationship with the vendor and strengthened its security measures. All ticket orders so far identified as impacted by the theft have also been replaced or fully refunded, according to StubHub.
Washington
CFPB drops lawsuit against Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo over Zelle fraud
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is dropping its lawsuit against the company that runs the Zelle payment platform and three U.S. banks as federal agencies continue to pull back on previous enforcement actions now that President Donald Trump is back in office.
In December a federal regulator sued JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, claiming the banks failed to protect hundreds of thousands of consumers from rampant fraud on Zelle, in violation of consumer financial laws.
In the federal civil complaint, the CFPB asserted that the banks rushed to get the peer-to-peer payments platform to market without effective safeguards against fraud and then, after consumers complained about being defrauded on the service, largely denied them relief.
Early Warning Services, a fintech company based in Scottsdale, Arizona, that operates Zelle, was named as a defendant in the lawsuit. EWS is owned by seven U.S. banks, including JPMorgan, Wells Fargo and Bank of America. Those three banks are the largest financial institutions on the Zelle network, accounting for 73% of activity on Zelle in 2023.
But a filing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona on Tuesday indicated that the CFPB was dismissing its lawsuit against EWS, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo with prejudice.
The dismissal comes less than a week after the CFPB dropped several enforcement actions against companies like Capital One and Rocket Homes.
In notices of voluntary dismissals that were filed, the CFPB dropped lawsuits it had brought against Capital One, Rocket Homes, Vanderbilt Mortgage and Finance, owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, and others.
Those suits were all filed under the agency’s previous director, Rohit Chopra, who Trump fired just weeks ago. The CPFB has since plunged into turmoil — with the White House later ordering it to halt nearly all its work. The administration also closed the agency’s headquarters and moved to fire scores of its workers.
Trump has defended his administration’s broadside against the CFPB — including recent claims about the agency being “set up to destroy people.” But supporters of the agency stress that it provides crucial oversight and protects consumers from being vulnerable to predatory business practices.
The CPFB isn’t the only federal agency to signal a pullback on previous enforcement action under the new administration. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has either closed or paused legal action against several cryptocurrency platforms in recent weeks, as the regulator tries to present itself as more crypto-friendly under Trump.
Last month Binance and the SEC filed a joint motion to pause its high-profile lawsuit against the crypto exchange. The SEC filed a similar joint motion with Coinbase. In addition, Robinhood has said that the case against it has been closed.
Deputies indicted on charges of assaulting man who later died of hypothermia in jail
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Two Alabama sheriff’s deputies were indicted in February on charges of using excessive force against a man who later died of sepsis and hypothermia in a local jail, according to a court filings made public on Tuesday.
A federal grand jury indicted Walker County sheriff’s deputies Carl Carpenter and James Handley with felony deprivation of rights for allegedly assaulting Tony Mitchell in 2023, who died two weeks later when he was detained in a concrete cell covered in feces with no toilet or access to medical attention. At least 10 jail employees have pleaded guilty to charges related to the death of the 33-year-old.
The two sheriff’s deputies arrested Mitchell on Jan. 12, 2023, after a relative asked for a welfare check on him. The sheriff’s office said at the time that Mitchell was talking about portals to hell and asserted that he had fired a weapon at officers.
Carpenter is accused of stepping on Mitchell while he was handcuffed until he couldn’t walk. Then both deputies allegedly dragged Mitchell on the ground, kicked him and slammed him onto the police car. Handley is accused of also accused of witness tampering for allegedly lying to a separate grand jury about the incident in August.
Neither Carpenter nor Handley is accused of inflicting injuries that directly contributed to Mitchell’s death.
Plea documents in the 10 other cases have detailed a local law enforcement culture that rewarded officers who abused incarcerated people, including Mitchell. One plea document said that officers intentionally kept the conditions in a local Alabama jail “as filthy as possible” to convince county commissioners to increase salaries and the budget of the jail.
The deputies indicted on Tuesday are the first Walker County Sheriff’s Office employees charged who were not assigned to work in the jail. Both deputies have arraignment dates set for March.
Florida
State AG’s office is investigating Tate brothers
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Florida’s attorney general announced Tuesday that his office has opened a criminal investigation into Andrew and Tristan Tate, who are charged with human trafficking in Romania, days after they returned to the U.S.
Attorney General James Uthmeier announced on social media that he directed his office to work with law enforcement to conduct a preliminary inquiry into the Tate brothers.
“Based on a thorough review of the evidence, I’ve directed the Office of Statewide Prosecution to execute search warrants and issue subpoenas in the now-active criminal investigation into the Tate brothers,” Uthmeier said.
After the Tates landed in Fort Lauderdale last Thursday, Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters that the brothers weren’t welcome in Florida and that he would have the attorney general examine whether the state may have any jurisdiction over their alleged crimes.
During an appearance Monday on the PPD Podcast, Andrew Tate said the governor was caving to media pressure. Tate said he has a U.S. passport and a right to visit his home country. He said he has broken no laws and that he has never even been tried, let alone convicted, of a crime.
The Tates, who are dual U.S.-British citizens, were arrested in late 2022 and formally indicted last year in Romania on charges they participated in a criminal ring that lured women to that country, where they were sexually exploited. Andrew Tate was also charged with rape. They deny the allegations.
Andrew Tate, 38, is a former professional kickboxer and self-described misogynist who is a hugely successful social media figure, attracting millions of followers, many of them young men and schoolchildren drawn in by the luxurious lifestyle the influencer projects online. He and his 36-year-old brother, Tristan, are vocal supporters of President Donald Trump.
Andrew Tate previously was banned from TikTok, YouTube and Facebook for hate speech and his misogynistic comments, including that women should bear responsibility for getting sexually assaulted.
The Tates left Romania after Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu said this month that a Trump administration official expressed interest in the brothers’ case at the recent Munich Security Conference.
Idaho
Judge tells attorneys to stop being so secretive in quadruple murder case
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — An Idaho judge is warning attorneys to quit filing so many sealed documents in the murder case of a man accused in the stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students.
Bryan Kohberger’s defense attorneys and prosecutors have made secrecy the norm rather than an exception, 4th District Judge Steven Hippler wrote in a court order on Monday.
“This runs counter to the public’s First Amendment rights to know what is going on in its courts,” Hippler wrote. He ordered the attorneys to use the least restrictive steps necessary to protect confidential information in the case, such as redacting some lines or using initials instead of an individual’s full name.
Kohberger is charged with four counts of murder in the deaths of Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves, students who were killed in the early morning of Nov. 13, 2022, at a rental home near their campus in Moscow, Idaho. When asked to enter a plea last year, Kohberger stood silent, prompting a judge to enter a not-guilty plea on his behalf. Prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty if Kohberger is convicted.
Hippler’s directive came as a flurry of new motions were filed ahead of the August trial, including a sealed defense motion to take the death penalty off the table that cited autism spectrum disorder.
Other sealed motions include one on whether the terms “psychopath” or “sociopath” can be used during the trial, and one from prosecutors about the presence of immediate family members in the courtroom during the trial. Some of the currently sealed documents will be redacted and made public, and others will remain sealed, the judge ruled.
A trial is expected to begin Aug. 11 and last for more than three months.
New York
Cybercrime crew stole then resold hundreds of tickets to Swift concerts, prosecutors say
NEW YORK (AP) — A cybercrime crew stole then resold more than 900 digital tickets to Taylor Swift concerts and other pricey events on StubHub, according to prosecutors in New York.
The international scam involved people working in Jamaica for a firm contracted by the online ticket marketplace, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said Monday.
The contractors stole the URLs of tickets purchased on StubHub and emailed them to others in New York, who then downloaded and resold them on StubHub at exorbitant prices, she said.
The crew raked in more than $600,000 in profits over roughly a year between June 2022 and July 2023, according to prosecutors.
The majority of the stolen tickets were for Swift’s Eras Tour, but the thieves also boosted ones for Adele and Ed Sheeran concerts, NBA games and the U.S. Open Tennis Championships.
Katz added that investigators are still determining the extent of the operation, including other potential co-conspirators.
Two of those involved, Tyrone Rose and Shamara Simmons, were arrested and charged last Thursday with grand larceny, computer tampering and conspiracy charges, Katz’s office said.
Rose, 20, was among those in Jamaica who re-directed purchased tickets to the emails of Simmons, 31, and another accomplice based in the New York City borough of Queens, according to prosecutors.
Rose was apprehended while he was visiting New York and was ordered to surrender his passport, Katz’s office said Tuesday. He and Simmons pleaded not guilty and were released pending their next court date Friday.
The public defender’s office representing Rose declined to comment, and lawyers for Simmons didn’t immediately respond Tuesday.
StubHub said Tuesday that it had discovered the criminal scheme and reported it to authorities and its third-party customer service vendor.
The company said it has since terminated its relationship with the vendor and strengthened its security measures. All ticket orders so far identified as impacted by the theft have also been replaced or fully refunded, according to StubHub.
Washington
CFPB drops lawsuit against Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo over Zelle fraud
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is dropping its lawsuit against the company that runs the Zelle payment platform and three U.S. banks as federal agencies continue to pull back on previous enforcement actions now that President Donald Trump is back in office.
In December a federal regulator sued JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, claiming the banks failed to protect hundreds of thousands of consumers from rampant fraud on Zelle, in violation of consumer financial laws.
In the federal civil complaint, the CFPB asserted that the banks rushed to get the peer-to-peer payments platform to market without effective safeguards against fraud and then, after consumers complained about being defrauded on the service, largely denied them relief.
Early Warning Services, a fintech company based in Scottsdale, Arizona, that operates Zelle, was named as a defendant in the lawsuit. EWS is owned by seven U.S. banks, including JPMorgan, Wells Fargo and Bank of America. Those three banks are the largest financial institutions on the Zelle network, accounting for 73% of activity on Zelle in 2023.
But a filing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona on Tuesday indicated that the CFPB was dismissing its lawsuit against EWS, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo with prejudice.
The dismissal comes less than a week after the CFPB dropped several enforcement actions against companies like Capital One and Rocket Homes.
In notices of voluntary dismissals that were filed, the CFPB dropped lawsuits it had brought against Capital One, Rocket Homes, Vanderbilt Mortgage and Finance, owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, and others.
Those suits were all filed under the agency’s previous director, Rohit Chopra, who Trump fired just weeks ago. The CPFB has since plunged into turmoil — with the White House later ordering it to halt nearly all its work. The administration also closed the agency’s headquarters and moved to fire scores of its workers.
Trump has defended his administration’s broadside against the CFPB — including recent claims about the agency being “set up to destroy people.” But supporters of the agency stress that it provides crucial oversight and protects consumers from being vulnerable to predatory business practices.
The CPFB isn’t the only federal agency to signal a pullback on previous enforcement action under the new administration. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has either closed or paused legal action against several cryptocurrency platforms in recent weeks, as the regulator tries to present itself as more crypto-friendly under Trump.
Last month Binance and the SEC filed a joint motion to pause its high-profile lawsuit against the crypto exchange. The SEC filed a similar joint motion with Coinbase. In addition, Robinhood has said that the case against it has been closed.
