Tag: crime

FBI digs up two upstate NY horse farms for bodies possibly buried by Gambino crime family members – one week after huge extortion ring linked to garbage trucks was exposed

The FBI is digging up two horse farms in upstate New York as it searches for bodies potentially buried by the notorious Gambino mob crime family.

Federal authorities have turned their attention to the properties in Orange County amid an ongoing investigation into the crime syndicate.

They used shovels and diggers to comb the farm in Campbell Hall on Tuesday and one in Goshen on Wednesday.

It comes after ten people with connections to the Gambino organization were arrested on a slew of racketeering charges last week.

No bodies were found during the search on Wednesday, a source confirmed to NBC New York, however it is scheduled to resume on Thursday.

The FBI declined to reveal who they believe could be buried at the farms, which list a Giovanni DiLorenzo as the property owner, the outlet reports.

Salvatore DiLorenzo was named as among the ten alleged Gambino members on an explosive 16-page indictment which claimed the Sicilian syndicate used violence and intimidation to try and dominate New York’s garbage hauling and demolition businesses.

Others charged were Vito Rappa, 46, and Francesco Vicari, 46 – who is known as ‘Uncle Ciccio.’ 

Vincent Minsquero, 36, known as ‘Vinny Slick,’ Kyle Johnson, 46, known as ‘Twin,’ and Angelo Gradilone, 57, known as ‘Fifi,’ were also arrested. 

The alleged captain of the Gambino crime ring – 52-year-old Joseph Lanni – was also charged with the slew of federal crimes. He is known by nicknames ‘Joe Brooklyn,’ and ‘Mommino.’

Diego ‘Danny’ Tantillo, James LaForte and Robert Brooke were also charged.

The infamous Italian-American crime syndicate made up one of the ‘Five Families’ known for their racketeering, gambling and loansharking. 

The defendants now variously face maximum sentences between 20 and 180 years’ imprisonment if convicted. 

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Full Extent of COVID Fraud Will ‘Never Be Known With Certainty’

A couple claiming to run a farm that employed dozens of people used fake employee records to get more than $1 million in COVID-19 relief payments when they actually employed no one on a farm that did not exist.

A social media influencer created fake documents to score more than $400,000 in COVID-19 funds meant to help small businesses, then used the money to buy cryptocurrency and gifts for his girlfriend.

A state employee whose job was to stop unemployment benefits fraud helped other fraudsters navigate around fraud prevention systems so they could steal more than $1 million, including federal tax dollars made available to states during the pandemic.

Only now, nearly four years after the federal government approved an unprecedented amount of emergency spending in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, are investigators getting a full picture of all the ways that schemers and thieves raided programs. Congress approved about $4.6 trillion in COVID-19 emergency spending, and so much of it was stolen that auditors now say we’ll likely never have a full accounting of it all.

“When the federal government provides emergency assistance, the risk of payment errors—including those attributable to fraud—may increase because the need to provide this assistance quickly can lead agencies to relax or forego effective safeguards,” the Government Accountability Office (GAO) explained in a new report summing up efforts to recoup stolen funds. “Because not all fraud will be identified, investigated, and adjudicated through judicial or other systems, the full extent of fraud associated with the COVID-19 relief funds will never be known with certainty.”

As Reason has previously reported, auditors believe that about $200 billion was fraudulently disbursed from two programs run by the Small Business Administration (SBA) during the pandemic. That’s about one-sixth of all spending run through the SBA’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program. Additionally, the GAO believes that between $100 billion and $135 billion in federal unemployment funds—provided to states on a temporary basis during the pandemic—were lost to fraud.

One former U.S. attorney has called it “the biggest fraud in a generation.”

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Suspect arrested in murder of Jewish synagogue leader Samantha Woll in Detroit was released because cops FAILED to file paperwork – including warrant for arrest

A suspect arrested in connection with the stabbing death of a prominent Jewish community leader was released after cops did not file the necessary paperwork, prosecutors have confirmed.

The revelation, offered this week by the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, comes almost a month after 40-year-old Samantha Woll was found stabbed to death outside her Detroit home, spurring an investigation that led to the suspect’s arrest.

On Friday, after being held for 72 hours, the suspect was released – days after the city’s police chief announced to reporters they had taken in a person of interest, without specifying what led to their arrest.

A dayslong interrogation ensued, culminating with the suspect being cut loose. The decision was reportedly made after the suspect made an ‘ambiguous’ statement to cops – one that sources told The Detroit News was not enough to warrant charges.

A warrant was never filed, and the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office’s hands were tied. A spokesperson for the office confirmed the situation in a brief statement.

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‘Wife beater Alaska mayor’s domestic abuser sons’ girlfriends are BOTH found dead at his home two years apart’ – with local cops accused of slow-walking probes into their deaths

A wife beater Alaska mayor’s two abusive sons each dated a woman who turned up dead at the lawmaker’s home two years apart – but no-one has ever been charged.

Jennifer Kirk and Sue Sue Norton were found dead with signs of strangulation and beating in 2018 and 2020 in the Alaskan town, Kotzebue. 

Both women were dating the ex-mayor Clement Richards’s sons at the time, with cops accused by ProPublica of inaction following the two women’s deaths.

Richards was previously convicted of beating his wife Annette, while his two sons Anthony and Amos also have a history of domestic violence.  Anthony had been convicted of beating Kirk prior to her death in May 2018, which cops claimed was a suicide. 

Amos admitted kicking Norton in the stomach while she was six months pregnant before she was killed in March 2020.

Despite those convictions – and a long track record of abuse allegations from multiple other women – neither of the sons have been charged in their deaths.

Holes in the police investigations and the judicial process have raised serious questions over a potential cover-up, after ProPublica and the Anchorage Daily News jointly reported the story.

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Suspect in Los Angeles Dismembered Torso Case Is Hollywood Scion, Whose Wife and In-Laws Remain Missing

The suspect in a Los Angeles case, where a dismembered torso was found in a dumpster, is reportedly a scion of a prominent Hollywood family whose wife and in-laws are missing.

Murder suspect Sam Haskell Jr., whose family is known for Christmas movies, was arrested after a homeless man found a headless body in a dumpster, according to a report by Fox News.

The Los Angeles Police Department said they responded to a dumpster at around 6:00 a.m. on Wednesday near the intersection of Ventura Boulevard and Rubio Avenue in Encino, where they found a woman’s torso.

Police said the victim has not yet been identified, but that the woman’s body may belong to the murder suspect’s wife.

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Alabama’s next death penalty atrocity: The execution of Casey McWhorter

30 years after a murder committed by three teenage boys, Alabama plans to execute one of them, Casey McWhorter, who was just three months past his 18th birthday at the time of the crime. (McWhorter’s co-defendants were 15 and 16, respectively.)

Any argument in favor of executing McWhorter is undercut by the illogical, unbending brutality of a bright-line legal rule established by the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2005, in Roper v. Simmons, the Court held the 8th and 14th Amendments prohibit the execution of defendants younger than age 18, but, not the execution of juveniles like McWhorter whom — mentally and emotionally — under any reasonable interpretation, were children at the time of their crime(s). This is because of Roper’s legal fiction that childhood rigidly ends at 18 years of age — on the nose — and not a day, or as in McWhorter’s case, 3 months, older. Describing that period in his life to a reporter recently, McWhorter said: “I had issues in my head that I didn’t know how to work out.”

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State Cleared to Use Never-Before-Seen Execution Method on Murderer of Preacher’s Wife

A divided Alabama Supreme Court has ruled in favor of using nitrogen gas as a method of execution, marking the first instance of the method being considered for carrying out a death sentence.

The all-Republican court, in a 6-2 decision issued on Wednesday, granted the state attorney general’s request for an execution warrant for Kenneth Eugene Smith. Smith was one of two individuals convicted in the 1988 murder-for-hire killing of Elizabeth Sennett in northwestern Alabama. The specific execution date will be determined later by Governor Kay Ivey.

This decision brings Alabama closer to becoming the first state to pursue nitrogen gas as an execution method. However, it is likely that further legal challenges will emerge before this method is actually used. Other states like Oklahoma and Mississippi have also authorized nitrogen hypoxia for executions, a process in which an inmate breathes pure nitrogen and is deprived of the oxygen required for survival. While advocates argue it may be painless, opponents liken it to unethical human experimentation.

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Take It From Brazil, Biden’s Ban on Flavored Cigarettes and Cigars Will Be a Disaster

The Biden administration’s flavored cigarettes and cigars ban, currently under final review by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), will soon make it illegal to buy or sell menthol and flavored tobacco products in the United States. Having announced its intention to prevent people, especially children, from becoming addicted to cigarettes and other drugs, Biden’s FDA will have to grapple with the consequences of their chosen method.

A similar ban in Brazil gives us a window into the probable outcome of Biden’s flavored cigarettes legislation. In 2012, after a series of court battles, Brazil became one of the first countries in the world to fully ban flavored cigarettes, wanting to minimize the demand for cigarette products and curb smoking in the country, particularly among children. 

To enforce the ban, Brazil has used its federal police force and its military police to crack down on the illegal cigarette market—with its government and law enforcement being one of the most vocal proponents of tobacco crackdowns since the mid-1980s. But Brazil quickly faced the fallout from its prohibitionist policy. 

Brazil’s demand for illegal cigarettes, particularly flavored cigarettes, only increased. Illegal actors quickly entered the market, leading the Brazilian government to conduct dangerous raids against illegal cigarette providers, with some resulting in bystanders being killed in the crossfire. The Brazilian government has lost billions of dollars in enforcement and tax revenues, while expenditures on illegal cigarettes rise. 

Brazil now has one of the largest cigarette markets in the world, despite its efforts to rid the country of cigarettes through prohibition. According to the Brazilian Institute for Competition Ethics (ETCO), the illegal cigarette market now represents about half of the entire cigarette market. Illegal cigarette consumption nearly doubled from 2008 to 2013 and in Brazil’s border areas it nearly tripled. 

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The Crypto Whistleblower at the Center of the Sam Bankman-Fried Storm

TIFFANY FONG STOOD among a gaggle of reporters in the gray tiled plaza of Daniel Patrick Moynihan Courthouse in downtown Manhattan. It was just past dawn, but members of the media were already queued up for the start of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial. Fong, 29, took periodic hits from her vape while chatting up reporters, doling out her number and self-deprecating one-liners for stories. She looked like a grown-up version of a former college “it” girl, wearing a black sweater vest, Nike Air Force One sneakers and a leather blazer tied around her petite waist. She whipped out her phone and started vlogging, documenting the experience for her legion of over 90,000 followers on X (formerly known as Twitter) and 30,000 subscribers on YouTube. 

Fong, according to her LinkedIn profile, is a “reluctant crypto content creator.” (She cringes at the term “influencer.”) She’d flown to New York City to attend Bankman-Fried’s trial in person at the Southern District courthouse. Bankman-Fried, who faces over a century in prison, has been charged with seven counts related to fraud. (He has pleaded not guilty.) But unlike other spectators, Fong has visited Bankman-Fried more than 10 times at his childhood home in Palo Alto during his months of house arrest. The pair spent dozens of hours alone in his parents’ study. He introduced her to his childhood stuffed bunny, Manfred. 

During that period, she temporarily moved to San Francisco to be within commuting distance of Bankman-Fried. Fong’s access is perhaps only rivaled by the author Michael Lewis, who spent hundreds of hours with Bankman-Fried for the book “Going Infinite,” an account of the crypto wunderkind’s rise and fall. (Since Bankman-Fried has been jailed and unreachable during his trial, this story of their months-long back-and-forth is told through Fong’s experience. A spokesperson for Bankman-Fried declined to comment.) 

“This is the weirdest little detour my life has taken, getting a front row seat to a massive financial fraud scandal,” Fong tells me in her Airbnb studio rental in downtown Manhattan, where I interview her on the eve of the trial. She sits cross-legged on the bed, showing me the new plastic vapes she hoped wouldn’t set off the metal detectors at the courthouse entrance. I first met Fong at a crypto conference in March, during a nightclub afterparty where the ratio of men to women approached that of a men’s locker room. I’d listened to Fong’s November interviews with Bankman-Fried from before his arrest, when he was telling anyone who’d listen that the collapse was due to a colossal failure of risk management, not fraud. “I’m so out of place in this story,” admits Fong. “It’s just like this random fucking chick wandered into this very serious situation.” 

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OHIO SERIAL KILLER ARRESTED: Woman Charged in Deaths of Multiple Men, AG Says

A 33-year-old Columbus woman who allegedly met men for sex and drugged them so she could rob them has been indicted in four murders, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and Columbus Division of Police Chief Elaine Bryant announced today.

Rebecca Auborn faces four counts of murder, four counts of involuntary manslaughter, five counts of aggravated robbery, five counts of felonious assault, five counts of corrupting another with drugs, one count of tampering with evidence and four counts of trafficking in drugs – all felonies.

“Don’t buy sex in Ohio – it ruins lives and could cost you yours,” AG Yost said.

The indictment, handed down today by a Franklin County grand jury, stems from a joint investigation by homicide detectives from the Columbus Division of Police and special agents from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI).

“These indictments are a result of our close collaboration with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation,” Chief Bryant said. “The Columbus Division of Police remains dedicated to ensuring justice for all victims and their families affected by the actions of a single individual.”

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