Tag: baltimore

Illegal immigrant arrested AGAIN after receiving no jail time for child sex crimes conviction in Baltimore

An illegal immigrant convicted of child sex crimes in Maryland has been apprehended by Immigration and Customs Enforcement weeks after he was released from custody by a Baltimore County judge. Raul Calderon-Interiano, 25, was sentenced to six years behind bars after being found guilty of a fourth-degree sex offense and second-degree assault involving a minor. However, Judge Jan Marshall Alexander decided to eliminate the prison portion of the punishment. 

ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division had asked the court to hold Calderon-Interiano in custody, however that request was not granted and he was set free. He was re-arrested by ERO agents near his home on May 29, and will remain under the watch of ICE pending his removal from the country. 

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No jail time for former Dem Baltimore prosecutor convicted of perjury, mortgage fraud

On Thursday, Marilyn Mosby was sentenced after being convicted of perjury and mortgage fraud.

The 44-year-old former Baltimore city prosecutor was spared jail time, instead receiving a sentence of 12 months home confinement, 100 hours of community service, and three years of supervised release.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who attended the sentencing hearing as a supporter, was seen celebrating the sentencing with Mosby and others.

According to the Associated Press, Mosby was accused of having withdrawn $90,000 from Baltimore’s deferred compensation plan in 2020 to make down payments on two homes in Florida, one in Kissimmee and another in Longboat Key.

Prosecutors argued that Mosby had lied about the impact the Covid-19 pandemic had on her travel-related side business in order to receive funds via the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act.

While Mosby’s lawyers claimed that the $90,000 came from her own retirement funds and that she had paid a penalty to access it prematurely on top of federal taxes, the government maintained that it was the property of the city, and should have remained so until she was actually eligible to receive it.

Mosby was also said to have submitted a “gift letter” of $5,000 in order to take out a loan that was used to purchase the aforementioned property in Longboat Key that, contrary to her claims that it was from her husband, had actually come from her own account.

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Former Baltimore prosecutor Marilyn Mosby found guilty on 2 counts of perjury

Former Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby has been convicted on two counts of perjury by a federal jury.

The federal jury reached the verdict Thursday, finding Mosby guilty of perjury after she falsely claimed financial hardship during the COVID-19 pandemic in order to withdraw money from the city’s retirement fund, prosecutors announced.

“We respect the jury’s verdict and remain steadfastly committed to our mission to uphold the rule of law, keep our country safe, protect the civil rights of all Americans, and safeguard public property,” U.S. Attorney Erek L. Barron said.

Mosby faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison for each of the two perjury counts. U.S. District Judge Lydia K. Griggsby hasn’t scheduled a sentencing hearing.

Mosby initially pleaded not guilty to the charges, which allege that the former prosecutor falsely claimed financial hardship during the pandemic in order to withdraw $90,000 from her city retirement accounts. She then used those funds for down payments on two vacation properties in Florida, prosecutors said.

Mosby lost a re-election bid in July 2022 to defense attorney Ivan Bates.

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Baltimore police warn suspect at large in female CEO slaying will ‘kill’ and ‘rape’

Baltimore police say that tech CEO Pava Marie LaPere was found dead in her apartment on Monday morning shortly after a missing-persons report was received.

LaPere, 26, was found dead Monday at 11:34 a.m. in the 300 block of West Franklin Street in Baltimore, police said. Officers found that LaPere had signs of blunt-force trauma.

Shortly before officers arrived at the apartment, a missing-person’s call was made, an investigation revealed. Homicide detectives are investigating her death.

During a press conference, officials revealed that Jason Deans Billingsley, 32, is a suspect in the case and wanted for first-degree murder, assault and other charges.

Police don’t believe Billingsley had any relationship with LaPere.

Billingsley was convicted of attempted rape and other violent crimes in 2011 and received a sentence of 30 years, but he was paroled in October 2022.

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FBI to exhume body of woman featured on Netflix series ‘The Keepers’

The FBI will exhume the body of a woman whose mysterious death was detailed in Netflix’s true-crime series “The Keepers,” as law enforcement officials explore a potential link with the cold case murder of a Baltimore nun. 

“The Keepers” investigated the unsolved murder of Sister Catherine Cesnik, a nun and Baltimore high school teacher, and allegations of sexual abuse by an influential Baltimore priest named Father Joseph Maskell in the 1960s. 

In November 1969, before Cesnik seemingly vanished, Joyce Malecki was strangled, stabbed and found submerged in a body of water at Fort Meade.

Malecki’s body will be exhumed from Loudon Park Cemetery in Baltimore with her family’s permission as the FBI explores an unspecified lead possibly connecting the two cases, Kurt Wolfgang, executive director of Maryland Crime Victims’ Resource Center, confirmed to news outlets. 

“The FBI gave us no indication other than to say the purpose of the exhumation is to collect evidence,” Wolfgang told WBAL-TV. “Our best speculation is that they may be looking for DNA evidence to match it up with a potential suspect they may already have.”

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23 Baltimore schools have zero students proficient in math, per state test results

Baltimore City is facing a devastating reality as the latest round of state test scores are released.

Project Baltimore analyzed the results and found a shocking number of Baltimore City schools where not a single student is doing math at grade level.

“We’re not living up to our potential,” said Jovani Patterson, a Baltimore resident who made headlines in January 2022, when he filed a lawsuit against Baltimore City Schools. The suit claims the district is failing to educate students and, in the process, misusing taxpayer funds.

“We, the taxpayer, are funding our own demise,” Patterson said at the time.

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Neo-Nazi Couple Arrested For Alleged Plot To ‘Completely Destroy’ Baltimore

A neo-Nazi couple was arrested and charged with conspiracy to damage power substations encircling Baltimore City that would “completely destroy” the metro area, according to Department of Justice (DoJ) court documents. 

On Monday, DoJ prosecutors announced Florida resident Brandon Clint Russell, an alleged leader of the neo-Nazi terror group Atomwaffen Divison, and Catonsville resident Sarah Beth Clendaniel conspired to destroy power substations with gunfire. 

“It would probably permanently completely lay this city to waste if we could do that successfully,” Clendaniel allegedly said last month, according to the criminal complaint. 

The DoJ said Russell analyzed the metro area with open-source maps detailing critical infrastructure locations. He allegedly said the attack on more than one electrical substation would unleash a “cascading failure” that would plunge the city into darkness. 

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Baltimore Residents To Get $1,000 Checks In UBI Pilot Test 

Newly elected Mayor Brandon Scott will provide unconditional payments of $1,000 a month for two years to low-income families in Baltimore City’s new guaranteed income pilot program, according to local news WBAL. 

According to a statement released by Scott’s office, the $1,000 monthly checks will be distributed to 200 low-income households across a metro area that struggles with violent crime and a broken economy thanks to decades of Democratic leadership. 

The city allocated $4.8 million in the American Rescue Plan funding to finance the Baltimore Young Families Success Fund. It’s a cover for pilot testing universal basic income (UBI). 

Requirments for free money require that a person be a millennial (18-24), be either the biological or adoptive parents or guardians, and have income at or below the federal poverty level. 

The free money comes with no strings attached, and they can spend it on anything.

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Victory! Fourth Circuit Rules Baltimore’s Warrantless Aerial Surveillance Program Unconstitutional

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled last week that Baltimore’s use of aerial surveillance that could track the movements of the entire city violated the Fourth Amendment.

The case, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle v. Baltimore Police Department, challenged the Baltimore Police Department’s (BPD) use of an aerial surveillance program that continuously captured an estimated 12 hours of coverage of 90 percent of the city each day for a six-month pilot period. EFF, joined by the Brennan Center for Justice, Electronic Privacy Information Center, FreedomWorks, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and the Rutherford Institute, filed an amicus brief arguing that the two previous court decisions upholding the constitutionality of the program misapplied Supreme Court precedent and failed to recognize the disproportionate impact of surveillance, like Baltimore’s program, on communities of color.

In its decision, the full Fourth Circuit found that BPD’s use and analysis of its Aerial Investigation Research (AIR) data was a warrantless search that violated the Fourth Amendment. Relying on the Supreme Court’s decisions in United States v. Jones and United States v. Carpenter, the Fourth Circuit held that Carpenter—which ruled that cell-site location information was protected under the Fourth Amendment and thus may only be obtained with a warrant—applied “squarely” to this case. The Fourth Circuit explained that the district court had misapprehended the extent of what the AIR program could do. The district court believed that the program only engaged in short-term tracking. However, the Fourth Circuit clarified that, like the cell-site location information tracking in Carpenter, the AIR program’s detailed data collection and 45-day retention period gave BPD the ability to chronicle movements in a “detailed, encyclopedic” record, akin to “attaching an ankle monitor to every person in the city.”

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“Deeply Unfair Move” – Baltimore Strippers Protest City’s COVID-19 Restrictions

Baltimore strippers showed up enforce at City Hall Wednesday to protest the mayor’s new coronavirus health measures that keep adult entertainment establishments closed, according to local television station WBAL. 

The announcement came from Mayor Brandon Scott earlier this week, who allowed restaurants to partially open with indoor capacity set to 25% and outdoor dining to 50%. He felt optimistic about current COVID-19 health trends in the city. 

However, strip clubs were not permitted to open; this triggered outrage among sex workers who protested the City Hall Wednesday afternoon. 

“This is a deeply unfair move, in our view,” an anonymous spokesperson for adult entertainment business owners in Baltimore said in a statement. “We’re being selectively targeted to stay closed. If you can open a gym or put on a stage show, you can have a gentleman’s club open. There’s some other agenda at work here, and it’s very insensitive to the not inconsequential number of people who make their livings through the adult entertainment industry.”

The statement also pointed out cooks, bartenders, janitors, security guards, and other tradespeople are also affected by the mayor’s harsh coronavirus measures. 

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