Wisconsin
Man accused of trying to get witness against him deported by writing letters threatening Trump
MILWAUKEE (AP) — A Wisconsin man is facing charges accusing him of forging a letter threatening President Donald Trump’s life in an effort to get another man who was a potential witness against him in a criminal case deported.
Prosecutors said in a criminal complaint filed Monday that Demetric D. Scott was behind a letter sent to state and federal officials with the return address and name of Ramo´n Morales Reyes.
Scott was charged Monday with felony witness intimidation, identity theft and two counts of bail jumping. His attorney, Robert Hampton III, didn’t immediately return an email from The Associated Press seeking comment.
Immigration agents arrested Morales Reyes, 54, on May 21 after he dropped his child off at school in Milwaukee. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the arrest, saying he had written a letter threatening to kill Trump and would “self-deport” to Mexico. The announcement, which also was posted by the White House on its social media accounts, contained an image of the letter as well as a photo of Morales Reyes.
But the claim started to unravel as investigators talked to Morales Reyes, who doesn’t speak English fluently, and obtained a handwriting sample from him that was different from the handwriting in the letters, according to court documents.
Morales Reyes is listed as a victim in the case involving Scott, who is awaiting trial in Milwaukee County Jail on armed robbery and aggravated battery charges. The trial is scheduled for July.
Law enforcement officers listened to several calls Scott made from the jail in which he talked about letters that needed to be mailed and a plan to get someone picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement so Scott’s trial could get dismissed, according to the criminal complaint. He also admitted to police that he wrote the letters, documents said.
Morales Reyes works as a dishwasher in Milwaukee, where he lives with his wife and three children. He had recently applied for a U visa, which is for people in the country illegally who become victims of serious crimes, said attorney Kime Abduli, who filed that application.
Abduli told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Monday that she was glad Morales Reyes was being cleared of any involvement in the letter writing.
His deportation defense lawyer, Cain Oulahan, wrote in an email Monday night that the main focus now is to secure Morales Reyes’ release from custody and the next step will be to pursue any relief he may qualify for in immigration court.
“While he has a U visa pending, those are unfortunately backlogged for years, so we will be looking at other options to keep him here with his family, which includes his three US citizen children,” Oulahan wrote.
Washington
Romanian man pleads guilty to ‘swatting’ plot that targeted an ex-US president and lawmakers
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Romanian citizen pleaded guilty on Monday to engaging in a plot to use “swatting” calls and bomb threats to intimidate and threaten dozens of people with bogus police emergencies, including a former U.S. president and several members of Congress.
Thomasz Szabo, 26, is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 23 by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington, D.C.
Szabo was extradited from Romania in November 2024. He was charged with Nemanja Radovanovic, 21, of Serbia.
Szabo pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and one count of making bomb threats.
The two men targeted roughly 100 people with “swatting” calls to instigate an aggressive response by police officers at the victims’ homes, a federal indictment alleges.
A U.S. Secret Service agent’s affidavit doesn’t name the former U.S. president or any other officials identified as victims of the hoax calls.
The two defendants are not explicitly charged in the indictment with threatening a former president, but one of the alleged victims is identified as a “former elected official from the executive branch” who was swatted on Jan. 9. 2024. Radovanovic falsely reported a killing and threatened to set off an explosion at that person’s home, the indictment says.
Szabo told Radovanovic that they should pick targets from both the Republican and Democratic parties because “we are not on any side,” the indictment says.
“This defendant led a dangerous swatting criminal conspiracy, deliberately threatening dozens of government officials with violent hoaxes and targeting our nation’s security infrastructure from behind a screen overseas,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.
Charges against Radovanovic are still pending. Online court records indicate that he hasn’t made any court appearances in Washington yet.
Washington
US citizen who joined Islamic State in Syria is sentenced to 10 years in prison
WASHINGTON (AP) — A naturalized U.S. citizen who pleaded guilty to receiving military training from the Islamic State group was sentenced Monday to 10 years in federal prison.
Lirim Sylejmani, 49, engaged in at least one battle against U.S.-led forces after he entered Syria in 2015, according to prosecutors.
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras in Washington, D.C., imposed Sylejmani’s prison sentence followed by a lifetime of supervised release.
Sylejmani, who was born in Kosovo and moved to Chicago roughly 25 years ago, pleaded guilty last December to one count of receiving military training from a foreign terrorist organization.
In November 2015, Sylejmani and his family flew to Turkey and then crossed the border into Syria, where he began training with other IS recruits, according to prosecutors. They said he was injured in a battle with Syrian forces in June 2016 and was captured with his family in Baghouz, Syria, in February 2019.
“The conduct is far more than a single, impulsive act. He chose to jeopardize the safety of his family by bringing them to a war-torn country to join and take up arms for ISIS,” prosecutors wrote.
Sylejmani’s attorneys say he isn’t a “committed jihadist” and doesn’t espouse violence.
“He is guilt ridden for his actions and the harm he has visited on his family, who remain detained in a refugee camp in Syria living under terrible conditions,” his lawyers wrote. “He wishes only to complete his time and find his wife and children, so he can live an average law-abiding life with them.”
New York
Town official claims self-defense in shooting of DoorDash driver
An upstate New York town official accused of shooting and wounding a food delivery person says he was protecting his family and has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and other charges.
Ring doorbell camera footage shows John Reilly III, the highway superintendent in Chester, a town nearly 60 miles (96 kilometers) north of Manhattan, shooting at the DoorDash driver’s car on May 2 as the person was trying to leave Reilly’s property. Prosecutors allege the shooting was unprovoked, saying the driver was lost and his cellphone battery was dead, as he only tried to see if Reilly had ordered the food he was trying to deliver.
But Reilly’s lawyer, Thomas Kenniff, said in a phone interview Tuesday that Reilly, worried about a home invasion, was defending his family after the driver insisted on entering his home.
Reilly pleaded not guilty Monday during an appearance at the Orange County courthouse in Goshen. The charges also include first-degree assault and weapons crimes. He did not comment while leaving the courthouse and remains free on bail.
Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler called the shooting a “horrifying” act of violence. The driver, who authorities have not named, was shot in the back and seriously wounded.
Video clips from Reilly’s Ring doorbell camera, obtained by TV station News 12 and the Times Union, show the series of events. One clip shows the driver walking up to Reilly’s front door with a plastic bag and ringing the doorbell. Another, from a short time later, appears to show the driver back in his car and Reilly exiting his house with a handgun. Reilly then fires a shot into his front lawn while saying, “Go.”
The video then shows Reilly shooting at the car as the driver is making a three-point turn in the driveway. He fires a third shot as the car is driving away.
Kenniff said the videos do not tell the full story.
Kenniff said Reilly’s 12-year-old daughter woke him up after the driver rang the doorbell and he answered the door, telling the driver he didn’t order any food. The driver, who was not wearing anything indicating he was from DoorDash, insisted on coming into the house to charge his phone, Kenniff said.
“My client, I think quite reasonably given the rash of home invasion robberies locally and around the country ... tells the gentleman to leave and advises that he’s going to get a gun that he uses for home protection, as a lot of people in rural areas justifiably do,” Kenniff said.
Kenniff said Reilly fired shots in an attempt to get the driver to leave his property and didn’t intend to harm the man.
“I think that this was a situation where my client reasonably believed that there was a threat and he took actions to try to protect his home and protect his family, and unfortunately there may have been unintended consequences,” Kenniff said.
Kenniff and his firm also represented Daniel Penny, a U.S. Marine veteran who was acquitted of criminally negligent homicide in December in connection with the chokehold death of a mentally ill man on a New York City subway in 2023.
Police executed a search warrant at Reilly’s house and seized eight illegally possessed guns, including the .45-caliber handgun used to shoot the driver, Hoovler said. While Reilly had a federal license to sell firearms, he did not have a New York state firearms license or pistol permit, making his possession of the guns illegal, Hoovler said.
“The unprovoked violence alleged in this case is truly horrifying,” Hoovler said in a statement.
Reilly is due back in court on July 2.
Nevada
Former UFC fighters file lawsuits
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Two former UFC fighters have filed antitrust lawsuits against the mixed-martial arts behemoth, alleging it operates as a monopoly that restricts their ability to maximize earnings.
Phil Davis and Mikhail Cirkunovs, who fought under the name Misha Cirkunov, filed their lawsuits in U.S. District Court in Nevada against the Las Vegas-based UFC. Cirkunovs’ complaint was filed on May 23, and Davis’ was filed six days later.
Philadelphia-based Berger Montague, which is represented locally by Las Vegas’ Claggett and Sykes, is the law firm for both fighters. A message left with the Las Vegas firm on Monday was not immediately returned.
Cirkunovs is seeking $75,000 in damages. Davis didn’t specify how much money he is suing for.
The UFC reached a $375 million settlement in September in a class-action antitrust lawsuit brought by Cung Le, who filed his claim in 2014.
The UFC has not reached an agreement with Kajan Johnson, who filed his lawsuit in 2021. Both recent complaints made references to the Johnson case, with the Cirkunovs’ suit saying they were similar.
Man accused of trying to get witness against him deported by writing letters threatening Trump
MILWAUKEE (AP) — A Wisconsin man is facing charges accusing him of forging a letter threatening President Donald Trump’s life in an effort to get another man who was a potential witness against him in a criminal case deported.
Prosecutors said in a criminal complaint filed Monday that Demetric D. Scott was behind a letter sent to state and federal officials with the return address and name of Ramo´n Morales Reyes.
Scott was charged Monday with felony witness intimidation, identity theft and two counts of bail jumping. His attorney, Robert Hampton III, didn’t immediately return an email from The Associated Press seeking comment.
Immigration agents arrested Morales Reyes, 54, on May 21 after he dropped his child off at school in Milwaukee. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the arrest, saying he had written a letter threatening to kill Trump and would “self-deport” to Mexico. The announcement, which also was posted by the White House on its social media accounts, contained an image of the letter as well as a photo of Morales Reyes.
But the claim started to unravel as investigators talked to Morales Reyes, who doesn’t speak English fluently, and obtained a handwriting sample from him that was different from the handwriting in the letters, according to court documents.
Morales Reyes is listed as a victim in the case involving Scott, who is awaiting trial in Milwaukee County Jail on armed robbery and aggravated battery charges. The trial is scheduled for July.
Law enforcement officers listened to several calls Scott made from the jail in which he talked about letters that needed to be mailed and a plan to get someone picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement so Scott’s trial could get dismissed, according to the criminal complaint. He also admitted to police that he wrote the letters, documents said.
Morales Reyes works as a dishwasher in Milwaukee, where he lives with his wife and three children. He had recently applied for a U visa, which is for people in the country illegally who become victims of serious crimes, said attorney Kime Abduli, who filed that application.
Abduli told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Monday that she was glad Morales Reyes was being cleared of any involvement in the letter writing.
His deportation defense lawyer, Cain Oulahan, wrote in an email Monday night that the main focus now is to secure Morales Reyes’ release from custody and the next step will be to pursue any relief he may qualify for in immigration court.
“While he has a U visa pending, those are unfortunately backlogged for years, so we will be looking at other options to keep him here with his family, which includes his three US citizen children,” Oulahan wrote.
Washington
Romanian man pleads guilty to ‘swatting’ plot that targeted an ex-US president and lawmakers
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Romanian citizen pleaded guilty on Monday to engaging in a plot to use “swatting” calls and bomb threats to intimidate and threaten dozens of people with bogus police emergencies, including a former U.S. president and several members of Congress.
Thomasz Szabo, 26, is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 23 by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington, D.C.
Szabo was extradited from Romania in November 2024. He was charged with Nemanja Radovanovic, 21, of Serbia.
Szabo pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and one count of making bomb threats.
The two men targeted roughly 100 people with “swatting” calls to instigate an aggressive response by police officers at the victims’ homes, a federal indictment alleges.
A U.S. Secret Service agent’s affidavit doesn’t name the former U.S. president or any other officials identified as victims of the hoax calls.
The two defendants are not explicitly charged in the indictment with threatening a former president, but one of the alleged victims is identified as a “former elected official from the executive branch” who was swatted on Jan. 9. 2024. Radovanovic falsely reported a killing and threatened to set off an explosion at that person’s home, the indictment says.
Szabo told Radovanovic that they should pick targets from both the Republican and Democratic parties because “we are not on any side,” the indictment says.
“This defendant led a dangerous swatting criminal conspiracy, deliberately threatening dozens of government officials with violent hoaxes and targeting our nation’s security infrastructure from behind a screen overseas,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.
Charges against Radovanovic are still pending. Online court records indicate that he hasn’t made any court appearances in Washington yet.
Washington
US citizen who joined Islamic State in Syria is sentenced to 10 years in prison
WASHINGTON (AP) — A naturalized U.S. citizen who pleaded guilty to receiving military training from the Islamic State group was sentenced Monday to 10 years in federal prison.
Lirim Sylejmani, 49, engaged in at least one battle against U.S.-led forces after he entered Syria in 2015, according to prosecutors.
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras in Washington, D.C., imposed Sylejmani’s prison sentence followed by a lifetime of supervised release.
Sylejmani, who was born in Kosovo and moved to Chicago roughly 25 years ago, pleaded guilty last December to one count of receiving military training from a foreign terrorist organization.
In November 2015, Sylejmani and his family flew to Turkey and then crossed the border into Syria, where he began training with other IS recruits, according to prosecutors. They said he was injured in a battle with Syrian forces in June 2016 and was captured with his family in Baghouz, Syria, in February 2019.
“The conduct is far more than a single, impulsive act. He chose to jeopardize the safety of his family by bringing them to a war-torn country to join and take up arms for ISIS,” prosecutors wrote.
Sylejmani’s attorneys say he isn’t a “committed jihadist” and doesn’t espouse violence.
“He is guilt ridden for his actions and the harm he has visited on his family, who remain detained in a refugee camp in Syria living under terrible conditions,” his lawyers wrote. “He wishes only to complete his time and find his wife and children, so he can live an average law-abiding life with them.”
New York
Town official claims self-defense in shooting of DoorDash driver
An upstate New York town official accused of shooting and wounding a food delivery person says he was protecting his family and has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and other charges.
Ring doorbell camera footage shows John Reilly III, the highway superintendent in Chester, a town nearly 60 miles (96 kilometers) north of Manhattan, shooting at the DoorDash driver’s car on May 2 as the person was trying to leave Reilly’s property. Prosecutors allege the shooting was unprovoked, saying the driver was lost and his cellphone battery was dead, as he only tried to see if Reilly had ordered the food he was trying to deliver.
But Reilly’s lawyer, Thomas Kenniff, said in a phone interview Tuesday that Reilly, worried about a home invasion, was defending his family after the driver insisted on entering his home.
Reilly pleaded not guilty Monday during an appearance at the Orange County courthouse in Goshen. The charges also include first-degree assault and weapons crimes. He did not comment while leaving the courthouse and remains free on bail.
Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler called the shooting a “horrifying” act of violence. The driver, who authorities have not named, was shot in the back and seriously wounded.
Video clips from Reilly’s Ring doorbell camera, obtained by TV station News 12 and the Times Union, show the series of events. One clip shows the driver walking up to Reilly’s front door with a plastic bag and ringing the doorbell. Another, from a short time later, appears to show the driver back in his car and Reilly exiting his house with a handgun. Reilly then fires a shot into his front lawn while saying, “Go.”
The video then shows Reilly shooting at the car as the driver is making a three-point turn in the driveway. He fires a third shot as the car is driving away.
Kenniff said the videos do not tell the full story.
Kenniff said Reilly’s 12-year-old daughter woke him up after the driver rang the doorbell and he answered the door, telling the driver he didn’t order any food. The driver, who was not wearing anything indicating he was from DoorDash, insisted on coming into the house to charge his phone, Kenniff said.
“My client, I think quite reasonably given the rash of home invasion robberies locally and around the country ... tells the gentleman to leave and advises that he’s going to get a gun that he uses for home protection, as a lot of people in rural areas justifiably do,” Kenniff said.
Kenniff said Reilly fired shots in an attempt to get the driver to leave his property and didn’t intend to harm the man.
“I think that this was a situation where my client reasonably believed that there was a threat and he took actions to try to protect his home and protect his family, and unfortunately there may have been unintended consequences,” Kenniff said.
Kenniff and his firm also represented Daniel Penny, a U.S. Marine veteran who was acquitted of criminally negligent homicide in December in connection with the chokehold death of a mentally ill man on a New York City subway in 2023.
Police executed a search warrant at Reilly’s house and seized eight illegally possessed guns, including the .45-caliber handgun used to shoot the driver, Hoovler said. While Reilly had a federal license to sell firearms, he did not have a New York state firearms license or pistol permit, making his possession of the guns illegal, Hoovler said.
“The unprovoked violence alleged in this case is truly horrifying,” Hoovler said in a statement.
Reilly is due back in court on July 2.
Nevada
Former UFC fighters file lawsuits
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Two former UFC fighters have filed antitrust lawsuits against the mixed-martial arts behemoth, alleging it operates as a monopoly that restricts their ability to maximize earnings.
Phil Davis and Mikhail Cirkunovs, who fought under the name Misha Cirkunov, filed their lawsuits in U.S. District Court in Nevada against the Las Vegas-based UFC. Cirkunovs’ complaint was filed on May 23, and Davis’ was filed six days later.
Philadelphia-based Berger Montague, which is represented locally by Las Vegas’ Claggett and Sykes, is the law firm for both fighters. A message left with the Las Vegas firm on Monday was not immediately returned.
Cirkunovs is seeking $75,000 in damages. Davis didn’t specify how much money he is suing for.
The UFC reached a $375 million settlement in September in a class-action antitrust lawsuit brought by Cung Le, who filed his claim in 2014.
The UFC has not reached an agreement with Kajan Johnson, who filed his lawsuit in 2021. Both recent complaints made references to the Johnson case, with the Cirkunovs’ suit saying they were similar.
