New York
Fashion startup founder charged with $300M fraud freed on $1M bail
NEW YORK (AP) — A former chief executive of two clothing technology companies was released on $1 million bail Friday after pleading not guilty to charges alleging she cheated investors of over $300 million over the past six years.
Christine Hunsicker, 48, of Lafayette, New Jersey, was charged with six counts, including fraud, aggravated identity theft and false statement charges in the indictment in Manhattan federal court.
U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in a release that Hunsicker forged documents, fabricated audits and made material misrepresentations about her company’s financial condition to defraud investors in CaaStle Inc. and P180.
The indictment said Hunsicker, once portrayed as an on-the-rise fashion entrepreneur, portrayed CaaStle as a high-growth, private company with substantial cash on hand when she knew it faced significant financial distress.
In a statement, defense lawyers Michael Levy and Anna Skotko said prosecutors “have chosen to present to the public an incomplete and very distorted picture in today’s indictment,” despite Hunsicker’s efforts to be “fully cooperative and transparent” with prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“There is much more to this story, and we look forward to telling it,” they said.
Hunsicker did not comment as she left the courthouse with Skotko after entering the not-guilty plea and agreeing to the rules of her $1 million bail, which included not having any contact with former or current investors or employees.
According to the indictment, Hunsicker continued her fraudulent scheme even after the CaaStle board of directors removed her and prohibited her from soliciting investments or taking other actions on the company’s behalf.
She “persisted in her scheme” even after law enforcement agents confronted her over the fraud, the indictment said.
Before the fraud allegations emerged, Hunsicker seemed to be a rising star in the fashion world after she was named to Crain’s New York Business “40 under 40” lists, was selected as one of Inc.’s “Most Impressive Women Entrepreneurs” and was recognized by the National Retail Federation as someone shaping the future of retail, the indictment noted.
At a time when the business was in financial distress with limited cash available and significant expenses, CaaStle was valued by Hunsicker at $1.4 billion, the indictment said.
Hunsicker was lying to investors in February 2019 and continued to do so through this March, prosecutors alleged.
They said she fed investors falsely inflated income statements, fake audited financial statements, fictitious bank account records and sham corporate records.
She allegedly told one investor in August 2023 that CaaStle reported an operating profit of nearly $24 million in the second quarter of 2023 when its operating profit that quarter was actually less than $30,000.
The indictment alleged that she carried out the majority of the fraud by bilking CaaStle investors of $275 million before forming P180 last year to infuse CaaStle with cash before its investors could discover her fraud.
Through misrepresentations and omissions, she cheated P180 investors out of about $30 million, the indictment said.
It said CaaStle filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy last month, leaving hundreds of investors holding now-worthless CaaStle shares. Hunsicker was forced to resign from CaaStle’s board in December and formally resigned as chief executive in March.
In a related civil filing, the SEC said Hunsicker’s “fake financials” supported her narrative that CaaStle was nearing an initial public offering or sale in late 2022 as it enjoyed rapid and steady revenue growth after launching a new monetization model called “Clothing-as-a-Service.”
“In reality, CaaStle’s revenues were shrinking, its losses were increasing, and the company was never profitable,” the lawsuit said. “Not a single existing or prospective CaaStle investor received accurate monthly, quarterly, or annual CaaStle financial statements from Hunsicker.”
Arkansas
Man pleads guilty in mass shooting at grocery store that killed 4
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — An Arkansas man changed his plea to guilty Monday in the shooting at a grocery store last year that killed four people and injured 11 others, including two police officers.
Travis Eugene Posey, 45, pleaded guilty to four counts of capital murder and 11 counts of attempted capital murder in the June 2024 shooting, according to his attorney. Gregg Parrish, executive director of the Arkansas Public Defender Commission, said Posey’s sentencing is set for Aug. 4.
Parrish declined to comment further. The shooting occurred last year at the Mad Butcher grocery store in Fordyce, a city of about 3,200 people located 65 miles (104 kilometers) south of Little Rock.
Posey has been held without bond since the shooting and last year pleaded not guilty to the same charges.
Posey entered the plea during a hearing in Camden, which is located 29 miles (45 kilometers) southwest of Fordyce.
Posey had been scheduled to go to trial next month for the shooting. Prosecutors and police have not publicly identified any motive for Posey, who was shot and injured by officers who exchanged fire with him. Police have said he did not appear to have a personal connection to any of the victims.
During the shooting, which occurred in the middle of the day, Posey carried a 12-gauge shotgun, a pistol and a bandolier with dozens of extra shotgun rounds, authorities said. He fired most, if not all, of the rounds using the shotgun, opening fire at people in the parking lot before entering the store and firing “indiscriminately” at customers and employees, police said. Multiple gunshot victims were found inside the store and in the parking lot, police said.
Posey lived in New Edinburg, a small town of about 150 people located southeast of Fordyce.
One of the women injured in the shooting has sued Posey, seeking monetary damages to cover medical care, lost earnings and other expenses as a result of the shooting. Attorneys for the woman have requested that a judge enter a default judgment against Posey, as he has not responded to the complaint.
The shooting had temporarily closed the only grocery store in the small town of Fordyce, prompting food distribution sites to be set up around the community. The Mad Butcher reopened 11 days after the shooting.
Authorities have said Posey had limited to no criminal history before the shooting, though he was arrested in 2011 at the entrance of Fort Drum in New York and charged with misdemeanor criminal possession of a weapon.
Florida
Environmentalists’ lawsuit to halt Alligator Alcatraz filed in wrong court, official says
Florida’s top emergency official asked a federal judge on Monday to resist a request by environmentalists to halt an immigration detention center known as Alligator Alcatraz in the middle of the Florida Everglades because their lawsuit was filed in the wrong jurisdiction.
Even though the property is owned by Miami-Dade County, Florida’s southern district is the wrong venue for the lawsuit since the detention center is located in neighboring Collier County, which is in the state’s middle district.
Decisions about the facility also were made in Tallahassee and Washington, Kevin Guthrie, executive director for the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said in a court filing.
“And all the detention facilities, all the buildings, and all the paving at issue are sited in Collier County, not Miami-Dade,” Guthrie said.
Environmental groups filed a lawsuit in Florida’s southern district last month, asking for the project being built on an airstrip in the heart of the Florida Everglades to be halted because the process didn’t follow state and federal environmental laws. A virtual hearing was being held Monday on the lawsuit.
Critics have condemned the facility as a cruel and inhumane threat to the ecologically sensitive wetlands, while Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and other state officials have defended it as part of the state’s aggressive push to support President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has praised Florida for coming forward with the idea, as the department looks to significantly expand its immigration detention capacity.
New York
Ex-NYPD commissioner accuses NYC mayor of ‘character assassination’ in $10 million defamation claim
NEW YORK (AP) — New York City’s former interim police commissioner has filed a $10 million defamation claim against Mayor Eric Adams for reportedly suggesting he was mentally unfit for the job of top cop.
The filing comes less than a week after the ex-commissioner, Thomas Donlon, sued Adams and his top deputies, accusing them of operating the department as a criminal racket that rewarded unqualified loyalists and punished whistleblowers. Donlon said he was sidelined for trying to clean up the corruption.
After that lawsuit was filed, Adams privately told members of a nonprofit business advocacy group at a meeting that he’d fired Donlon, 71, from his brief stint as commissioner last fall because he was “rapidly deteriorating mentally,” according to attendees. Donlon cited news reports about those comments in his legal claim.
The department’s former top spokesperson, Tarik Sheppard, who was also named in Donlon’s lawsuit, told reporters that his former boss was “going through some cognitive issues” and believed “there was this conspiracy against him.”
Their comments amounted to a defamatory “public character assassination” intended to “weaponize mental health to silence a whistleblower,” Donlon’s attorney, John Scola, said Monday.
Donlon, a former FBI official, was appointed by Adams in September to lead a department reeling from overlapping federal investigations and high-level resignations.
He was replaced by the current commissioner, Jessica Tisch, in November. During his short tenure, federal authorities searched Donlon’s home for decades-old documents that he said were unrelated to his work at the department.
He has not been publicly accused of wrongdoing in connection with that search.
In his short time as commissioner, Donlon said he uncovered “systemic corruption” by members of the mayor’s inner circle, including a scheme to reward unqualified loyalists with lucrative promotions in exchange for political favors.
In his lawsuit, Donlon accused Sheppard of misappropriating the commissioner’s rubber stamp signature to give himself a raise, then threatening to kill Donlon when confronted about it.
Sheppard, who left the department in May, has denied that allegation. Inquiries to City Hall about the defamation claim were not immediately returned.
In a statement last week, a spokesperson for Adams, Kayla Mamelak Altus, described Donlon’s claims as “absurd.”
“These are baseless accusations from a disgruntled former employee who — when given the opportunity to lead the greatest police department in the world — proved himself to be ineffective,” she said.
The defamation claim adds to a recent spate of litigation brought by police officals against Adams, focusing scrutiny on his leadership as he seeks re-election on a platform emphasizing managerial competence and public safety.
Earlier this month, four high-ranking former NYPD officials brought separate lawsuits accusing Adams and his deputies of allowing rampant corruption and cronyism within the police department.
In response to those suits, a spokesperson for Adams said the administration “holds all city employees — including leadership at the NYPD — to the highest standards.”
Fashion startup founder charged with $300M fraud freed on $1M bail
NEW YORK (AP) — A former chief executive of two clothing technology companies was released on $1 million bail Friday after pleading not guilty to charges alleging she cheated investors of over $300 million over the past six years.
Christine Hunsicker, 48, of Lafayette, New Jersey, was charged with six counts, including fraud, aggravated identity theft and false statement charges in the indictment in Manhattan federal court.
U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in a release that Hunsicker forged documents, fabricated audits and made material misrepresentations about her company’s financial condition to defraud investors in CaaStle Inc. and P180.
The indictment said Hunsicker, once portrayed as an on-the-rise fashion entrepreneur, portrayed CaaStle as a high-growth, private company with substantial cash on hand when she knew it faced significant financial distress.
In a statement, defense lawyers Michael Levy and Anna Skotko said prosecutors “have chosen to present to the public an incomplete and very distorted picture in today’s indictment,” despite Hunsicker’s efforts to be “fully cooperative and transparent” with prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“There is much more to this story, and we look forward to telling it,” they said.
Hunsicker did not comment as she left the courthouse with Skotko after entering the not-guilty plea and agreeing to the rules of her $1 million bail, which included not having any contact with former or current investors or employees.
According to the indictment, Hunsicker continued her fraudulent scheme even after the CaaStle board of directors removed her and prohibited her from soliciting investments or taking other actions on the company’s behalf.
She “persisted in her scheme” even after law enforcement agents confronted her over the fraud, the indictment said.
Before the fraud allegations emerged, Hunsicker seemed to be a rising star in the fashion world after she was named to Crain’s New York Business “40 under 40” lists, was selected as one of Inc.’s “Most Impressive Women Entrepreneurs” and was recognized by the National Retail Federation as someone shaping the future of retail, the indictment noted.
At a time when the business was in financial distress with limited cash available and significant expenses, CaaStle was valued by Hunsicker at $1.4 billion, the indictment said.
Hunsicker was lying to investors in February 2019 and continued to do so through this March, prosecutors alleged.
They said she fed investors falsely inflated income statements, fake audited financial statements, fictitious bank account records and sham corporate records.
She allegedly told one investor in August 2023 that CaaStle reported an operating profit of nearly $24 million in the second quarter of 2023 when its operating profit that quarter was actually less than $30,000.
The indictment alleged that she carried out the majority of the fraud by bilking CaaStle investors of $275 million before forming P180 last year to infuse CaaStle with cash before its investors could discover her fraud.
Through misrepresentations and omissions, she cheated P180 investors out of about $30 million, the indictment said.
It said CaaStle filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy last month, leaving hundreds of investors holding now-worthless CaaStle shares. Hunsicker was forced to resign from CaaStle’s board in December and formally resigned as chief executive in March.
In a related civil filing, the SEC said Hunsicker’s “fake financials” supported her narrative that CaaStle was nearing an initial public offering or sale in late 2022 as it enjoyed rapid and steady revenue growth after launching a new monetization model called “Clothing-as-a-Service.”
“In reality, CaaStle’s revenues were shrinking, its losses were increasing, and the company was never profitable,” the lawsuit said. “Not a single existing or prospective CaaStle investor received accurate monthly, quarterly, or annual CaaStle financial statements from Hunsicker.”
Arkansas
Man pleads guilty in mass shooting at grocery store that killed 4
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — An Arkansas man changed his plea to guilty Monday in the shooting at a grocery store last year that killed four people and injured 11 others, including two police officers.
Travis Eugene Posey, 45, pleaded guilty to four counts of capital murder and 11 counts of attempted capital murder in the June 2024 shooting, according to his attorney. Gregg Parrish, executive director of the Arkansas Public Defender Commission, said Posey’s sentencing is set for Aug. 4.
Parrish declined to comment further. The shooting occurred last year at the Mad Butcher grocery store in Fordyce, a city of about 3,200 people located 65 miles (104 kilometers) south of Little Rock.
Posey has been held without bond since the shooting and last year pleaded not guilty to the same charges.
Posey entered the plea during a hearing in Camden, which is located 29 miles (45 kilometers) southwest of Fordyce.
Posey had been scheduled to go to trial next month for the shooting. Prosecutors and police have not publicly identified any motive for Posey, who was shot and injured by officers who exchanged fire with him. Police have said he did not appear to have a personal connection to any of the victims.
During the shooting, which occurred in the middle of the day, Posey carried a 12-gauge shotgun, a pistol and a bandolier with dozens of extra shotgun rounds, authorities said. He fired most, if not all, of the rounds using the shotgun, opening fire at people in the parking lot before entering the store and firing “indiscriminately” at customers and employees, police said. Multiple gunshot victims were found inside the store and in the parking lot, police said.
Posey lived in New Edinburg, a small town of about 150 people located southeast of Fordyce.
One of the women injured in the shooting has sued Posey, seeking monetary damages to cover medical care, lost earnings and other expenses as a result of the shooting. Attorneys for the woman have requested that a judge enter a default judgment against Posey, as he has not responded to the complaint.
The shooting had temporarily closed the only grocery store in the small town of Fordyce, prompting food distribution sites to be set up around the community. The Mad Butcher reopened 11 days after the shooting.
Authorities have said Posey had limited to no criminal history before the shooting, though he was arrested in 2011 at the entrance of Fort Drum in New York and charged with misdemeanor criminal possession of a weapon.
Florida
Environmentalists’ lawsuit to halt Alligator Alcatraz filed in wrong court, official says
Florida’s top emergency official asked a federal judge on Monday to resist a request by environmentalists to halt an immigration detention center known as Alligator Alcatraz in the middle of the Florida Everglades because their lawsuit was filed in the wrong jurisdiction.
Even though the property is owned by Miami-Dade County, Florida’s southern district is the wrong venue for the lawsuit since the detention center is located in neighboring Collier County, which is in the state’s middle district.
Decisions about the facility also were made in Tallahassee and Washington, Kevin Guthrie, executive director for the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said in a court filing.
“And all the detention facilities, all the buildings, and all the paving at issue are sited in Collier County, not Miami-Dade,” Guthrie said.
Environmental groups filed a lawsuit in Florida’s southern district last month, asking for the project being built on an airstrip in the heart of the Florida Everglades to be halted because the process didn’t follow state and federal environmental laws. A virtual hearing was being held Monday on the lawsuit.
Critics have condemned the facility as a cruel and inhumane threat to the ecologically sensitive wetlands, while Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and other state officials have defended it as part of the state’s aggressive push to support President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has praised Florida for coming forward with the idea, as the department looks to significantly expand its immigration detention capacity.
New York
Ex-NYPD commissioner accuses NYC mayor of ‘character assassination’ in $10 million defamation claim
NEW YORK (AP) — New York City’s former interim police commissioner has filed a $10 million defamation claim against Mayor Eric Adams for reportedly suggesting he was mentally unfit for the job of top cop.
The filing comes less than a week after the ex-commissioner, Thomas Donlon, sued Adams and his top deputies, accusing them of operating the department as a criminal racket that rewarded unqualified loyalists and punished whistleblowers. Donlon said he was sidelined for trying to clean up the corruption.
After that lawsuit was filed, Adams privately told members of a nonprofit business advocacy group at a meeting that he’d fired Donlon, 71, from his brief stint as commissioner last fall because he was “rapidly deteriorating mentally,” according to attendees. Donlon cited news reports about those comments in his legal claim.
The department’s former top spokesperson, Tarik Sheppard, who was also named in Donlon’s lawsuit, told reporters that his former boss was “going through some cognitive issues” and believed “there was this conspiracy against him.”
Their comments amounted to a defamatory “public character assassination” intended to “weaponize mental health to silence a whistleblower,” Donlon’s attorney, John Scola, said Monday.
Donlon, a former FBI official, was appointed by Adams in September to lead a department reeling from overlapping federal investigations and high-level resignations.
He was replaced by the current commissioner, Jessica Tisch, in November. During his short tenure, federal authorities searched Donlon’s home for decades-old documents that he said were unrelated to his work at the department.
He has not been publicly accused of wrongdoing in connection with that search.
In his short time as commissioner, Donlon said he uncovered “systemic corruption” by members of the mayor’s inner circle, including a scheme to reward unqualified loyalists with lucrative promotions in exchange for political favors.
In his lawsuit, Donlon accused Sheppard of misappropriating the commissioner’s rubber stamp signature to give himself a raise, then threatening to kill Donlon when confronted about it.
Sheppard, who left the department in May, has denied that allegation. Inquiries to City Hall about the defamation claim were not immediately returned.
In a statement last week, a spokesperson for Adams, Kayla Mamelak Altus, described Donlon’s claims as “absurd.”
“These are baseless accusations from a disgruntled former employee who — when given the opportunity to lead the greatest police department in the world — proved himself to be ineffective,” she said.
The defamation claim adds to a recent spate of litigation brought by police officals against Adams, focusing scrutiny on his leadership as he seeks re-election on a platform emphasizing managerial competence and public safety.
Earlier this month, four high-ranking former NYPD officials brought separate lawsuits accusing Adams and his deputies of allowing rampant corruption and cronyism within the police department.
In response to those suits, a spokesperson for Adams said the administration “holds all city employees — including leadership at the NYPD — to the highest standards.”
