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Palisades Fire Fraud: Man Headed To Prison After Scamming $64K Out Of FEMA

An East Hollywood man is headed to federal prison for a year and a day after collecting more than $64,000 in wildfire disaster relief on a Pacific Palisades home he had no connection to whatsoever.

Delvonne Dashon Johnson, 32, was sentenced on July 31 in Los Angeles and ordered to repay $64,148 to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He pleaded guilty last year to fraud in connection with major disaster or emergency benefits – a charge that carries a statutory maximum of 30 years.

In February 2025, weeks after the Palisades Fire tore through the coastline, Johnson filed a FEMA claim listing a Pacific Palisades address as a home he owned. FEMA wired him $64,138 later that same month – except, he didn’t own the house. Someone else did, and she was living in it.

The fraud unraveled only when the actual homeowner tried to file her own claim. FEMA told her someone had already submitted one on her property’s behalf. When investigators interviewed her on April 2, 2025, she told them she had lived at the address since 2015, that it was her primary residence, that she was there when the fire hit, that she had never rented the place to anyone, and that she had never heard of Delvonne Johnson.

Johnson was not working alone – he was one of several people federal prosecutors swept up for running the same play on the same disaster. Deanniah Hogan, 32, of Compton, allegedly posed as a renter at a Palisades home and drew roughly $17,351. Zenalyn McIntre, 38, of Sherman Oaks, allegedly submitted a fabricated utility bill and a driver’s license listing a different address, and received about $25,229. Hedeshia Robertson, 36, of Lakewood, pleaded guilty after obtaining some $24,899. Another defendant allegedly claimed a nonexistent Altadena address as her destroyed primary residence and collected $23,441, plus two FEMA-booked hotel stays. Jaime Arturo Carrillo, 48, pleaded guilty after claiming property damage and utility disruption at a South Los Angeles address roughly 20 miles from either fire.

The pattern extends well beyond Los Angeles County. In June, a Honolulu man was sentenced to two years for conspiring to submit false FEMA claims tied to both the Lahaina fire and the Pacific Palisades fire, with a co-defendant posing as his Maui landlord before turning around and claiming to have lived in Pacific Palisades herself. The pair collected more than $60,000. He then filed fabricated flight records with the court and picked up an obstruction charge on top.

Victims of the Eaton and Palisades fires could qualify for a one-time $750 FEMA payment, up to $43,600 in other-needs assistance covering personal property, transportation and medical costs, and housing assistance for as long as 18 months. Homeowners were eligible for up to another $43,600 in repair money. Money that moves fast enough to help people who just lost everything moves fast enough to reach people who lost nothing.

The two fires ignited on Jan. 7, 2025, burned close to 60,000 acres, destroyed more than 16,000 structures, and killed 30 people.

For claiming a slice of the recovery money set aside for those people, Johnson drew 12 months and one day.

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Former FBI Agent Charged With Stealing Nearly $1 Million In Crypto, Asked ChatGPT How To Hide It

A supervising U.S. FBI agent who worked in intelligence at the national headquarters has been arrested and accused in a federal court filing of stealing more than $1 million in cryptocurrency.

The high-level special agent, identified as Patrick Steven Yarmoch, allegedly turned himself in to agency colleagues, reporting that he dug crypto keys from FBI systems to make as many as a dozen transfers to himself from accounts tied to foreign individuals he’d investigated, according to an August 1 account filed with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

“During the afternoon of July 28, 2026, Yaroch contacted DOJ Employee 1 via Signal and requested to meet to discuss personal matters,” prosecutors said in the complaint.

“Upon meeting DOJ Employee 1 at FBI headquarters, Yaroch immediately started to break down as he told his story.”

Yarmoch — who held a “top secret” security clearance — had worked in counterintelligence, specifically with an investigative unit that focused on an unnamed “adversary nation,” according to the court filing, which noted he was suspended for a couple of days before being fired and arrested on July 31.

The resident of Ashburn, Virginia, had worked as a supervisory special agent at FBI headquarters in Washington, specifically in its counterintelligence and espionage division. He’d previously worked for years out of Boston, where he’d been in a national-security unit investigating the adversary nation referenced in the court filing.

In handling the digital assets, Yarmoch was said to use accounts with Kraken and also Suilend, the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem for the Sui blockchain, via a Slush wallet.

The FBI searches of his computer and phone records revealed some of his recent questions to AI apps, including, “If you had a bucket of money (around $1 million) and you wanted to leave the USA and become a resident or citizen of an EU country, what would you do?”

To which the app allegedly recommended Portugal as a favored destination.

Investigators also located travel plans for Yarmoch and his family to go to Portugal next month, and located the power of attorney forms for Portugal.

“Yaroch stated he was not planning to funnel money into Portugal,” the complaint said.

“Yaroch told FBI WF Agents that his family had a trip planned to Portugal in September 2026 to meet friends. Yaroch realized he might not be able to attend the trip but stated he hoped his wife and child would still go on the trip.”

Later searches included whether Americans need a visa when connecting through Turkey and help drafting a follow-up email about a job opportunity and life in Greece.

He was also said to take recent trips to Germany, and Grenada that he hadn’t reported internally, in violation of FBI rules.

Yarmoch was placed in detention in Alexandria, Virginia.

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Revealed: Here’s What Pirro Brought to the White House After Trump Blasted Her For Dropping Reflecting Pool Criminal Case

US Attorney for DC Jeanine Pirro arrived at the West Wing of the White House on Monday afternoon with a white box in tow as President Trump ripped into her for dropping the criminal Lincoln Pool vandalism case.

The Justice Department on Friday dismissed the Lincoln Reflecting Pool vandalism case against David Hearn.

David Hearn, the former Olympian who was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor for destruction of property for vandalizing the Lincoln Reflecting Pool in June, was indicted by a grand jury on felony charges last month.

Hearn is a three-time Olympic canoeist.

Hearn was charged with felony destruction of government property. He was facing 10 years in prison.

Pirro dropped the case and said the damage to the Lincoln Reflecting Pool was the result of “flawed installation by the contractor.”

Earlier Monday, President Trump spoke out about Pirro’s move to drop the case during remarks to reporters in the Oval Office.

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Waymo Robotaxi Crash Rate 68% Lower Than Human Drivers, Study Finds

Though they’ve have racked up quite a few troubling anecdotes on America’s roads, Waymo robotaxis have achieved a crash rate that’s far lower than what’s observed when humans are driving, according to a recent study published by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. A private scientific organization funded by insurance companies, IIHS is regarded by many as a superior font of accurate scientific conclusions compared to the government-run and lobbyist-vulnerable National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. 

According to the July IIHS study, “Rise of the Machines: Crash Experiences of Highly Automated Vehicles and Human Drivers,” Waymo vehicles in autonomous mode posted “police-reportable crash involvement rates” fully 68% lower than human-operated vehicles in the same areas and years. Researchers studied crash rates in Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Francisco. Importantly, the IIHS studied data from 2021 to 2024; to the extent Waymo has improved its programming, the current relative performance may be even better. 

The Waymo edge was highest in Phoenix and Los Angeles (76% and 71% lower crash rates, respectively). San Francisco’s Waymos posted a 35% lower crash rate. In a bit of a headscratcher in terms of the being a huge outlier, Waymo had a 4% higher crash rate in Austin. The study’s authors note that the sample size in Austin was smaller for both Waymo and human drivers. 

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Nervous Chuck Schumer Dodges Questions About Endorsing Socialist Michigan Senate Candidate in General Election and Whether Rise of DSA is Good for Party

America’s top-ranking Democrat, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), is running away as the Democratic Socialists of America storm his party. 

Schumer on Tuesday fielded questions from reporters during a weekly press conference, where he was asked about his party’s DSA wing and once again dodged the questions.

A reporter asked about tonight’s Michigan Senate primary between Schumer-backed Haley Stevens and far-left DSA-aligned Abdul El-Sayed, and whether Schumer would endorse the winner if El-Sayed emerges victorious.

El-Sayed has denied that he is a socialist, but he’s attended and spoken at at least six DSA events over the years, according to Fox.

“I’m not technically or practically DSA,” he claimed in an interview last month. “I am not somebody who is a socialist. I believe in capitalism; I just believe that capitalism has to be regulated.” He’s also been described as “a longtime friend of Detroit DSA” during a 2019 event where he was photographed with Socialist Rep. Rashida Tlaib.

Schumer responded with a complete non-answer. “Bottom line, we are going to win Michigan, take back the Senate, and have a majority,” he said before enthusiastically moving on to take a question from CNN’s Manu Raju.

Raju, however, asked an equally daunting question for the Senate Minority Leader: Is the rise of the DSA good for your party?

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FBI Pressured U.S. Customs to Ditch Plan to Question Key Fauci Ally on Return Trip From Wuhan

The FBI intervened to prevent U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents from questioning “virus hunter” Peter Daszak, Ph.D., on a return trip from Wuhan, China, according to documents released this week by Sen. Rand Paul. Three days before Daszak was scheduled to arrive in New York, a CBP Joint Terrorism Task Force liaison wrote, “Please be advised FBI New York requested we do not stop the subject.”

The FBI intervened to prevent U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents from questioning “virus hunter” Peter Daszak, Ph.D., on a return trip from Wuhan, China, according to documents released this week by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

The documents show that in February 2021, Daszak, a key ally to Dr. Anthony Fauci and then-president of the EcoHealth Alliance, traveled to Wuhan as part of a World Health Organization (WHO) investigation into the origins of COVID-19.

CBP planned to stop and question Daszak on his return to the U.S. that month. But in an email dated Feb. 2, 2021 — three days before Daszak was scheduled to arrive in New York — a CBP Joint Terrorism Task Force liaison wrote, “Please be advised FBI New York requested we do not stop the subject.”

The CBP Tactical Terrorism Response Team was prepared to question Daszak about the business he conducted in China, his contacts at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and whether he collected or was carrying any samples of viruses or other pathogens.

One document states that CBP viewed Daszak as “an extremely high person of interest” due to his longstanding ties with the Wuhan laboratory.

A Jan. 11, 2021, CBP email flagged Daszak’s participation in the WHO’s team investigating the pandemic’s origins in Wuhan as a potential “conflict of interest.”

A Feb. 2, 2021, email noted that much of the funding Daszak was receiving was “put toward gain of function research.”

Notably, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security email contained within the documents, which provided background information on Daszak’s research activity, referenced an article The Defender published in January 2021.

Paul released the documents as part of his ongoing congressional investigation into the origins of COVID-19. In a post on X earlier this week, he said the documents challenge the narrative that a lab leak was implausible.

“The American people can finally judge the evidence for themselves,” Paul wrote.

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NIH Used Aborted Babies for Coronavirus Research Under Fauci’s Leadership

The left is incapable of owning abortion and the results of it despite championing it, Shawn Carney, President of 40 Days For Life, said during an appearance on Breitbart News Daily, discussing the gruesome reality of aborted babies being used for coronavirus research.

Host Mike Slater played a clip of Sen. Joni Erst (R-IA) laying out the grueling reality of what happened during the coronavirus as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) used aborted babies for research.

“Researchers also used aborted baby body parts in mice research, and taxpayers paid for them to do that. NIH-funded coronavirus researcher Dr. Ralph Baric and his colleagues at UNC put parts of livers, thymuses, and chunks of human fetal lung that they got from aborted, almost five-month-old human babies. They put those parts in their research mice,” Ernst said during Fauci’s hearing before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs last week.

“They disgustingly named them BLTL mice and wrote they had created a quote sandwich of aborted body parts in the mice. Get it, folks? BLT. A BLT sandwich. Your RML lab employees in Montana also ordered and used aborted baby body parts in their taxpayer-funded research, and emails show how they plan to use those mice for post-COVID work,” she continued.

“NIH funded putting aborted babies’ fingers and scalps off the heads of aborted babies and putting them into the backs of research mice. The scalps later grew fine baby hair in the mice. They even included those disgusting photos in their research paper that you funded. Not all of those were research on coronaviruses, but some were. Thankfully, the current NIH director has said no more of this,” she said.

“Trump banned aborted medical research using aborted babies. Dr. Fauci, yes or no? Do you think that human aborted parts should be put into mice for coronavirus research?” Ernst asked, as Fauci refused to answer.

“It is so much wrong,” Carney said, noting that President Trump banned the use of aborted babies in medical research earlier this year.

“So the HHS did that. … I was at their press conference, and not only did they cite how immoral it is, obviously, but they also cited that it’s not even needed with the medical advancement that that we have today. So Trump, you know, banned this sort of behind the scenes, but it was definitely going on, you know, in this context. And God bless Joni for you know holding Fauci’s feet to the fire,” he said, observing that the left is absolutely incapable of embracing the reality of what they support.

“This is the problem with the left. Why doesn’t he just say, “Look, abortion kills a baby, and yeah, we use the the body parts for research, for the common good. You know, why don’t think just own it?” he asked. “The left will never just own abortion, and you know they clearly didn’t in this case, and it’s hard to watch.”

When asked for the justification for this barbaric practice, Carney said they cite “vaccine use.”

“…which is where we got the flu shot from an aborted baby in the late 1930s,” he said. “It’s that it has cells that only we have, and they can be used and harvested to advance either a vaccine or some kind of medication. But back then, it was – the baby was already aborted. It wasn’t aborted for this purpose. That’s sort of like an end of the weeds, you know, argument. But yeah, that’s what it was used for. And now we don’t need those, you know, sort of human cells in certain vaccines.”

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Arson Suspect Identified and Arrested in Spokane Wildfires that Torched Hundreds of Homes – Man Previously Gunned Down HIS OWN FATHER

A ‘climate change’ narrative pushed by the left following the latest wildfires affecting the United States has imploded following news that an arson suspect has been arrested. And his past is absolutely harrowing.

As The Gateway Pundit reported yesterday, The Old Trails Fire in Spokane County, Washington, ignited on Saturday across parts of Spokane, Washington.

The fires rapidly expanded under strong winds, prompting widespread Level 3 “Go Now” evacuations that forced 64,000 residents to flee their homes.

By evening, multiple homes had been burned, with videos posted to social media showing the devastation. 700 homes in total burned to the ground.

Early coverage, including CNN’s live updates, used “climate crisis” language, and the Associated Press described the fires as erupting “across a parched landscape” amid severe drought and low snowpack.

Climate activists and social media accounts ran with the climate crisis narrative.

But in news that should shock absolutely no one, the corporate media got it all wrong. On August 3, the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office arrested a 37-year-old man named Aaron F. Farinacci on suspicion of first-degree arson.

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Home invasions became most common crypto wrench attack in H1 2026: CertiK

Crypto home invasions rose to 20 in H1 2026 from one a year earlier, while France accounted for 33 of 52 verified wrench attacks, according to CertiK.

Home invasions became the most common form of crypto wrench attacks during the first half of 2026, rising to 20 publicly reported incidents from just one a year earlier, according to blockchain security firm CertiK. 

On Thursday, CertiK said it verified 52 wrench attacks worldwide in the first half of 2026, up 33.3% from 39 incidents during the same period in 2025. Kidnappings rose to 16 from 12, while robberies declined from five incidents to one. 

CertiK said the recorded financial exposure linked to the attacks reached about $124.1 million, up from $10.5 million a year earlier. The figure is not limited to confirmed thefts and may include ransom demands, victim transfers, frozen or recovered assets and failed ransom demands. 

The increase in home invasions suggests criminals are increasingly bypassing digital safeguards by physically coercing crypto holders and their families.

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ICE faults Biden-era policies for third illegal entry by man convicted in Marine’s 2017 killing

An illegal immigrant who was deported twice and on his third illegal entry, was convicted of an automotive offense that killed a U.S. Marine is in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody and heading toward a third deportation.

Martin Martinez-Ballinas, 38, a Mexican national, has entered the U.S. illegally on three separate occasions. He is now in ICE custody after being held in federal prison at Fort Dix, New Jersey, ICE reported.

“Martinez-Ballinas repeatedly and flagrantly disregarded the laws of the United States and faces deportation for the third time,” Enforcement and Removal Operations Newark Acting Field Office Director Arthur J. Wilson, Jr. said in a statement. 

“A complete lack of respect for human life and our legal system”: ICE says

“His conviction for an automotive offense that resulted in the tragic loss of a U.S. Marine in 2017 demonstrates a complete lack of respect for human life and our legal system. Anyone who believes violations of U.S. immigration law are trivial or inconsequential should take note: Federal offenses carry serious consequences, and we will continue to enforce the law to protect our communities and honor those who serve our nation.”

In 2017, Martinez-Ballinas was convicted of a hit-and-run in Maryland that took the life of 21-year-old U.S. Marine James Ray Walden III, The New York Post reported. Walden’s father told “The Will Cain Show” on Fox News that Martinez-Ballinas was driving without a license or insurance when he crossed into oncoming traffic and struck the young Marine’s motorcycle head on.

“My son was 21 years old. He was just starting his life,” Walden said. “He was in the Marine Corps. He worked for intel. He worked for the National Security Agency as a crypto analyst, basically Jimmy Spide with a computer.”

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