Federal investigators were looking into a securities fraud case last spring when a financial executive hoping for leniency said offered information on another matter, reports the Wall Street Journal. The executive said Rudy Meredith, the women’s soccer coach at Yale University had sought a bribe in return for getting his daughter admitted to the Ivy League school. Authorities zeroed on the coach, who cooperated in what became the biggest college-admissions fraud ever prosecuted. From 2011 to 2018, parents allegedly paid $25 million to William Singer, a college-admissions consultant, to bribe coaches and administrators to designate their children as top recruits in football, water polo, soccer, track or volleyball at universities including the University of Southern California, Georgetown and Wake Forest. Some parents also paid Singer as much as $75,000 for test-cheating services. Authorities have charged 33 parents with paying for illegal services to get their children into colleges; three people who were allegedly paid to fraudulently raise scores on SAT and ACT exams, as well as nine college coaches and five others. The new details revealed more about the origins and breadth of an investigation that involved families at the highest economic echelons, accused of pushing their way ahead of other college applicants with lies, bribes and cheating. Prosecutors said the plot attracted parents from affluent communities in California and in the east. “What we do is help the wealthiest families in the U.S. get their kids into school.” Singer told parent Gordon Caplan in a recorded call. “They want guarantees. They want this thing done.” The response from Caplan, co-chairman of New York law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher, was, “To be honest, it feels a little weird. But…What do I need to do?” The federal investigation, named Operation Varsity Blues, received court approval to tap Singer’s phone in June. The video is disturbing: A police officer is seen striking an unarmed suspect with his handgun as the man falls into the grass. An autopsy would later show he died from a gunshot to the back of the head. After the death last July of 26-year-old Daniel Fuller in Devils Lake, N.D., investigators described the video to his grieving relatives, but for months, they refused to release it to the family or the public. They did so only after a prosecutor announced in November that the officer did not intend to fire his gun and would not face criminal charges, reports the Associated Press. An AP investigation found that police departments routinely withhold video taken by body-worn and dashboard-mounted cameras that show officer-involved shootings and other uses of force. They cite a broad exemption to state open records laws, claiming that releasing a video would harm an ongoing investigation. During the last five years, taxpayers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to outfit officers’ uniforms and vehicles with cameras and to store the footage they record as evidence. Body cameras have been touted as a way to increase police transparency by allowing for a neutral view of whether an officer’s actions were justified. Yet videos can be withheld for months, years or even indefinitely. Some departments voluntarily release videos of high-profile incidents, sometimes within days or weeks. Many routinely release videos that show officers in a positive light, rescuing people from accidents and fires. How requests are handled varies widely. The AP tested the public’s ability to access police video for Sunshine Week, an annual celebration of open government, by filing open records requests related to 20 recent use-of-force incidents in a dozen states. They failed to unearth video of a single incident that had not already been released. Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was sentenced to a total of seven and a half years in prison on federal charges Wednesday, then was hit with fresh state charges in New York that could put him outside the president’s power to pardon, reports the Associated Press. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington, D.C., rejected Manafort’s pleas for leniency and rebuked him for misleading the U.S. government about his lucrative foreign lobbying work and for encouraging witnesses to lie on his behalf. “It is hard to overstate the number of lies and the amount of fraud and the extraordinary amount of money involved” in the crimes, Jackson told Manafort, 69. She added three-and-a-half years on top of the nearly four-year sentence Manafort received last week in a separate case in Virginia. He will get credit for nine months already served. Manafort was among the first people charged in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election campaign. Though the allegations did not relate to his work for candidate Donald Trump, his foreign entanglements, and his business relationship with an associate the U.S. says has ties to Russian intelligence, have made him a pivotal figure in the probe. Soon after Manafort’s federal sentence was imposed, New York prosecutors unsealed a 16-count indictment accusing him of giving false information on mortgage loan applications. The new case could protect against the possibility that Manafort could avoid much more prison time with a pardon from Trump. New York state law prevents state-level charges that mirror federal counts that have been resolved and bars prosecutors from pursuing state-level charges when a person has been pardoned for the same federal crimes. Eleven health experts issued an urgent plea in a private letter to high-level Obama administration officials in May 2016. Thousands of people were dying from overdoses of fentanyl — the deadliest drug to ever hit U.S. streets — and the administration needed to take immediate action. The epidemic had been escalating for three years. The experts pressed officials to declare fentanyl a national “public health emergency” that would put a laserlike focus on combating the emerging epidemic and warn the nation about the threat, the Washington Post reports. “The fentanyl crisis represents an extraordinary public health challenge — and requires an extraordinary public health response,” the experts wrote to officials, including the “drug czar” and the chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The administration did not act on the request. The Post calls the decision “one in a series of missed opportunities, oversights and half-measures by federal officials who failed to grasp how quickly fentanyl was creating another — and far more fatal — wave of the opioid epidemic.” In the span of a few years, fentanyl, a synthetic painkiller 50 times more powerful than heroin, became the drug scourge of our time. “This is a massive institutional failure, and I don’t think people have come to grips with it,” said John Walters, chief of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy between 2001 and 2009. Federal officials saw fentanyl as an appendage to the overall opioid crisis rather than a unique threat that required its own strategy. On Jan. 11, 2017, in the waning days of the administration, Obama delivered his annual National Drug Control Strategy to Congress. Four years after the epidemic began, the White House called fentanyl a national crisis. Families of California murder victims had varied reactions to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s suspension of the death penalty, the Los Angeles Times reports. Cindy Rael’s daughter Brandi was shot to death and her body lit on fire in front of her children eight years ago. “I was pissed off,” said Rael. “This man brutally murdered my daughter and now he’s going to just get life in prison. I have to live with this every day of my life…. I am totally against [Newsom] doing away with it.” Another mother was grateful for Newsom’s decision. “What I say is, ‘Don’t murder someone in my name,’ it does nothing to benefit my daughter, it won’t bring anybody back,” said Aba Gayle. After years of living in rage and pain, she befriended the death row inmate who killed Catherine Blount in 1980. The comments of victims’ family members were a reminder of how personal and polarizing the capital punishment issue has remained through the years. Lawmakers and civil rights and criminal justice reform groups have worked to change how the state deals with offenders, but the plight of death row inmates has garnered scant sympathy with voters, who in 2016 rejected a measure that would have halted executions in the state and passed one meant to speed them up. While Newsom and reformers argue that the death penalty is weighted with racial and other biases and has not been fairly applied, those in favor contend it is appropriate punishment for the worst crimes. “California just became a dictatorship today,” said Tami Alexander, wife of former NFL player Kermit Alexander, vocal proponents of the effort to fast track the death penalty. The couple has waited more than three decades for the execution of Tiequon Cox, who shot and killed her husband’s mother, sister and two nephews in 1984. The Justice Department has launched a multistate search for firearms and firearms parts stolen from a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) facility, CBS News reports. The main concern is that the weapons may fall into the wrong hands. Along with staging a criminal and internal affairs investigations, ATF officials notified the Justice Department’s inspector general, who has been critical of some ATF weapons disposal procedures. Authorities have one suspect in custody, Christopher Yates. According to court documents, officials found “a firearm concealed in a book bag on the front passenger seat floorboard” when they searched Yates’ vehicle on March 1. Agents determined the pistol had a serial number on it. The ATF computer system confirmed the firearm had been listed as “disposed” by the ATF’s National Disposal Branch in 2017. On Sunday night, officials sent a communication urging stepped up efforts to locate any stolen firearms from the facility. They were concerned buyers may not know where they originated. “ATF has made substantial progress in recovering the stolen property and is working around-the-clock to pursue all leads,” the agency said. An inspector general report last year said the destruction of firearms and ammunition is supposed to be “witnessed by an ATF Special Agent and a credentialed employee or contractor who then signs a report of destruction certifying that the firearm has been destroyed.” That same report identified concerns about ATF’s “ability to track seized ammunition.” ATF officials said there could be more arrests and that they did not know how many firearms or firearms parts were stolen. New York City police are investigating the bold, fatal shooting of accused Gambino crime boss Francesco “Franky Boy” Cali outside his Staten Island home, USA Today reports. Cali, 53, was shot six times in the chest by a gunman who then roared off in a blue pickup. Federal prosecutors have described Cali as a top leader of New York’s notorious Gambino crime family. His murder marked the most notable killing of a Gambino boss since 1985, when Paul Castellano was shot dead in front of the Sparks Steak House in Manhattan. Cali was a native of Sicily, and his wife is the niece of Gambino capo John Gambino. New York media outlets have reported that since 2015 Cali had ascended to the top spot in the gang, although he never faced a criminal charge making the claim. Cali’s only mob-related criminal conviction was a decade ago, when he pleaded guilty in an extortion conspiracy involving a failed attempt to build a NASCAR track on Staten Island. He was sentenced to 16 months in federal prison and was released in 2009. The Gambino family was once among the most powerful criminal organizations in the U.S., but federal prosecutions in the 1980s and 1990s sent its top leaders to prison. Gambino leader John Gotti died in federal prison in 2002. Gotti’s brother, Gene, 71, was released from prison last year after serving almost 30 years for dealing heroin. Another former group leader, Carmine John “The Snake” Persico Jr., died last week while serving a 139-year prison sentence. He was 85. Two years after Bernalillo County, N.M., barred local law enforcement from cooperating with immigration authorities, its leaders learned that the policy was being subverted from within. Staff members at the county jail in Albuquerque were still granting immigration authorities access to its database and, in some cases, tipping them off when a person of interest was being released, the Associated Press reports. “I was surprised and horrified,” said Maggie Hart Stebbins, chairwoman of the Bernalillo County Commission. “Individual employees do not have the freedom to pick and choose what they want to observe.” The disclosure cast a spotlight on an often-overlooked way in which immigration officials around the U.S. may be getting around local “sanctuary” policies through informal relationships with police and others willing to cooperate when they’re not supposed to. Immigration activists say they have seen it places like Philadelphia, Chicago and several communities in California, which has a statewide sanctuary law. “Often people underestimate the informal relationship between ICE and local law enforcement,” said Sara Cullinane of the immigrant-rights organization called Make the Road New Jersey. She said a major way to make sure immigrant-friendly ordinances are being obeyed is training officers about what they can and cannot do. Over 100 local governments have adopted a variety of sanctuary rules barring police and jails from cooperating with immigration authorities, often by refusing to hold people arrested on local charges past their release date at the request of immigration officers who intend to pick them up. The federal government’s immigration enforcement agency is using mass surveillance techniques to track immigrants, and local police agencies are participating, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is using an automated license plate reader database to track immigrants as they go about their daily lives, according to documents ACLU Northern California obtained under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed in 2018, reports Courthouse News Service. “It is appalling that ICE has added this mass surveillance database to its arsenal, and that local law enforcement agencies and private companies are aiding the agency in its surveillance efforts,” said the ACLU’s Vasudha Talla. The ACLU obtained documents showing ICE spent $6 million on a contract with Vigilant Solutions, otherwise known as West Publishing, which maintains a database of information drawn from automated license plate readers positioned strategically around the U.S. ICE said it signed the contract with a company to gain access to the license plate reader database, but that the agency does not collect or contribute information. “Like most other law enforcement agencies, ICE uses information obtained from license plate readers as one tool in support of its investigations,” said Matthew Bourke, an ICE spokesman. More than 9,000 ICE agents have access to the database, which includes about information collected by private companies, insurance companies, toll booths, tow trucks and other apparatuses. The information hosted by Vigilant Solutions is often used not only by ICE but by various law enforcement agencies as an investigative tool. As for the large number of ICE personnel having access to the database, ICE says it has developed a policy to ensure its use of the database complies with privacy and civil liberties requirements. The Senate confirmed Neomi Rao to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on Wednesday despite opposition from Democrats and initial concerns from a handful of Republicans over her writings on sexual assault and her position on abortion, reports Politico. In a 53-46 vote along party lines, the Senate approved Rao to replace Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh on the court. During Rao’s confirmation hearing, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) grilled the nominee, who is head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, on her views on date rape and gender equality. In an article written as an undergraduate at Yale, Rao said that if a woman “drinks to the point where she can no longer choose, well, getting to that point was part of her choice.” Ernst, one of two Republican women on the Senate Judiciary Committee, criticized Rao at the time, saying the nominee’s writing gave “her pause.” Ernst previously said she was raped in college. Ernst’s concerns were eased after Rao sent a letter to Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) that expressed regret for her college writings. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), another commitee member, voiced concerns about Rao’s views on abortion. However, both Ernst and Hawley voted to confirm her. Senate Democrats raised questions about the circumstances under which she would recuse herself from cases challenging Trump administration regulations. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said that Rao’s record “shows she will continue to tilt our courts in favor of the powerful few and leave everyone else behind.” Former Louisiana prison warden Nate Cain abruptly entered a guilty plea Wednesday on the third day of his federal trial on corruption charges, cutting the proceedings short as his ex-wife prepared take the stand to testify against him, The Advocate reports. Cain pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud related to gun purchases he made on the state’s dime while serving as warden of Avoyelles Correctional Center. U.S. Attorney David Joseph said he expects Cain, 51, to serve time in federal prison and pay restitution for the crimes. The deal marked a sudden end to a trial in which Cain had faced 17 counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The former warden, who resigned in 2016, took the plea before the jury heard from his ex-wife, Tonia Bandy, and corrections secretary Jimmy LeBlanc. Bandy had already pleaded guilty in the case. Cain and Bandy were accused of spending thousands of dollars meant for the prison’s operations on a slew of personal purchases — from flat screen TVs and Yeti coolers to toilet paper and coffee, as well as construction supplies to build a new home on prison property — while shielding the fraudulent transactions from any state oversight. The counts to which Cain pleaded guilty Wednesday pertained only to certain purchases of gun and gun accessories, which amounted to less than $1,000. Cain admitted to those purchases, and apologized to taxpayers. |
