Tag: crime

Homeless Repeat Criminal Who Broke into Portland Business Files $10 Million Lawsuit After Getting Shot by Owner 

A career criminal with a lengthy record of burglaries and thefts who broke into a Portland countertop fabrication business and was shot three times by the owner while attempting to flee is now seeking $10 million in a civil lawsuit, arguing the property owner used excessive force against him.

The incident took place on March 6, 2023, around 5:30 a.m.

The criminal, 43-year-old Kenneth Voyles, who was homeless and had methamphetamine in his system, entered Touchstone Granite & Marble Inc. by pulling plywood off a damaged garage door and cutting through metal bars.

Voyles later claimed he was looking for food and to get out of the cold but also admitted he intended to rob the place.

Inside the building, he ran into the 70-year-old owner, James Grant, an Army veteran with a concealed weapons permit who had been living in a back room of the business.

Grant, who was not wearing his hearing aids, confronted Voyles, threw a cup of urine and tiles at him, and ordered him to leave.

“I go, ‘Stop!’ Like, ‘Please stop!’” Voyles claimed in court, according to a report from the Post Millennial. “He’s assaulting me. He was pretty angry.”

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Valuable Stolen Picasso Found Hanging on Milwaukee Apartment Wall After Tenant Was Evicted

A stolen Pablo Picasso print worth $50,000 has been claimed by its rightful owner after it was discovered by a landlord in Wisconsin while cleaning out a vacant apartment.

Gallery owner Bill DeLind thought the print by the iconic Spanish artist was gone for good after it was stolen in 2018 from his Milwaukee showroom.

Then, last week, he got a call from police. They wanted him to took at the reduction-style image that a Milwaukee landlord had discovered while turning around one of his apartments.

DeLind knew immediately what he was looking at. It was his stolen “Torero” print, one of 30 known to exist signed by Picasso, the New York Post and other outlets reported.

“I was overwhelmed,” DeLind said Friday. “I was at a loss for words. It was an overwhelming moment for me.”

“It was indeed mine,” he added. “It came back full circle.”

The landlord, Tim Dertz, told WISN-TV that he found the print while cleaning out an apartment of a tenant he had to evict.

“It was kind of in a weird spot hanging on a wall,” Tim Dertz told the station, per the Post’s report. “It looked like it had been there for a long, long time because it had tons of dust across the top of it.”

The landlord said he showed it to an antique dealer friend who recognized it as an authentic Picasso.

Dertz handed it over to police, who then contacted DeLind.

The Milwaukee Police Department told the Post Friday that the statute of limitations for theft and property crimes is generally six years. Still, the case remains under investigation, the department said.

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Former Assistant Anoka County Attorney charged for alleged role in sex trafficking operation

A former Assistant Anoka County Attorney is facing 26 charges related to her alleged role in a sex trafficking operation in the Twin Cities area.

Andrea Leigh Sampson, 35, has been charged with 13 counts of promoting prostitution of an individual and 13 counts of receiving profits from prostitution.

Sampson’s arrest comes from an investigation that has been ongoing since 2021 by various law enforcement agencies, including the Minnesota BCA and the Human Trafficking Task Force.

According to court documents, Sampson, along with three others, Frank Reeves, Viktoriya Komonash and Katherine Thomes, are accused of operating or playing a role in a sex trafficking organization in Hennepin County and surrounding areas.

According to court documents, the organization would operate a website called “Minnesota Erotica Personals,” where various women would be “posted” for users to request sexual transactions.

Sampson’s alleged role in the operation was to secure and provide locations where these “transactions” could occur, as well as creating and maintaining multiple LLCs, which court documents claim appeared to have been shell companies to help hide profits coming in from the sex trafficking.

Properties owned by Sampson have allegedly been found to be where some of the women advertised on the website had their photos taken and where some “transactions” occurred.

Court documents stated law enforcement spoke with various women throughout the investigation regarding their experiences with the group and the “Minnesota Erotica Personals” website.

13 of those women were later identified as victims in court documents.

In a statement, Anoka County Attorney Brad Johnson confirmed Sampson was once an assistant attorney with the county, assigned to the office’s Family Law and Civil Division.

According to Johnson, the BCA spoke with top members of the Anoka County Attorney’s Office on Feb. 25, 2026, and informed them it was investigating Johnson.

The Anoka County Attorney’s Office placed Sampson on administrative leave, and her last day of employment was March 9.

Sampson is currently in custody in Hennepin County; her first court date is scheduled for Aug. 17.

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New York City Losing Millions to Fare Skippers as People Embrace Zohran Mamdani’s Promise of ‘FREE’ Buses

During the mayoral race, communist Zohran Mamdani made the promise of ‘free’ buses a central part of his campaign. He hasn’t delivered on this promise yet, but that hasn’t stopped New Yorkers from pretending that he did and skipping bus fares.

The lost revenue is costing the city millions, which could put a damper on the mayor’s many other promises of free stuff.

It’s just the sort of basic economics that people on the left refuse to understand.

FOX News reports:

New Yorkers take Zohran Mamdani free bus promise literally as MTA loses millions in skipped fares

Political promises of “free buses” in New York City are contributing to a spike in fare evasion that is costing the city’s mass transit system millions of dollars, transit officials warn.

In July, Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Chairman Janno Lieber blamed political rhetoric for fueling fare evasion, though he never mentioned Mayor Zohran Mamdani by name.

“There’s a trend that broke out,” Lieber told reporters following a meeting of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board, according to the New York Post. “With malice towards none, I say all of the talk of free buses, it has an impact.”

The MTA reported that paid bus ridership fell nearly 8% in June compared to the same month last year. During Mamdani’s first six months in office, bus fare revenue fell by $31 million compared to the first half of 2025. Agency estimates show nearly half of bus riders now skip the $3 fare.

Mamdani made the slogan “fast and free buses” a major part of his 2025 mayoral campaign. However, the MTA is controlled by Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state, rather than City Hall. While the mayor and Hochul unveiled plans on July 8 to focus instead on speeding up bus routes, experts and union leaders say the “free bus” rhetoric has already contributed to fare evasion.

Who could have predicted this, besides every conservative in the country?

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Actor charged with 24 felony counts in alleged child sexual abuse case

A California actor and producer is facing 24 felony charges after investigators said he used online casting calls to contact minors as part of an alleged pattern of child sexual abuse spanning decades.

Shane Ryan Gledhill, 46, of Lompoc, was arrested Aug. 3 after Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s detectives spent nearly five years investigating accusations of exploitation.

Gledhill, whose work involved projects connected to actors including Shelley Duvall, Tom Arnold, Richard Dreyfuss and Ed Harris, was initially booked on 15 felony charges. That total has now climbed to 24.

The investigation began in November 2021, when a 17-year-old survivor approached Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s investigators about what they described as suspicious and inappropriate conduct involving Gledhill when she was 15, according to authorities.

That initial report led to an investigation that eventually identified nine survivors, the Sheriff’s Office said. All were minors at the time of the alleged offenses.

In February 2022, investigators executed a search warrant at his residence in Lompoc. Investigators seized thousands of digital files, which underwent an extensive forensic examination.

The Sheriff’s Office said the investigation uncovered a pattern in which Gledhill allegedly used online casting calls and film-making projects to contact aspiring young actors.

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A Flock Camera Flagged Her Car in a Homicide by Mistake. Police Pulled Her Over at Gunpoint Twice

A Wisconsin woman was stopped by police with guns drawn twice in one week after an automated license plate camera wrongly linked her car to a Milwaukee homicide. Milwaukee police say the alert should have been deleted days earlier, but a staffer never cleared it.

According to Local 12, Amber Newell was driving on I-94 in Brookfield, west of Milwaukee, on the afternoon of August 6 when a Flock camera flagged her vehicle as connected to a homicide investigation. FOX6 Milwaukee reported that video from the interstate showed multiple officers with guns drawn and a passenger sticking their hands out the window. After Brookfield officers reached out to the Milwaukee Police Department to verify the alert, MPD responded that the vehicle and its occupants were no longer of interest, and the people were let go. Newell told FOX6 the same thing had happened to her earlier that week.

The issue was not the camera reading her plate wrong. Milwaukee police said this was a personnel problem, not a Flock problem: staff failed to remove a wanted vehicle alert from the system after it was no longer needed. Brookfield Police Chief Christopher Garcia has defended the stop, and Milwaukee police back him up, saying his officers acted on the information they had. Newell described the fear in plain terms. “I haven’t been asleep since this has happened,” she said. “Every time I close my eyes, all I can see is guns.” She also said her young daughter is now afraid to ride in the car.

Flock Safety operates a network of roughly 120,000 cameras across the country, and the system works by photographing plates, timestamping them, logging a location, and checking each read against police hotlists. When a plate matches, officers get an alert. That means your car’s movements can land in a searchable database whether or not you are suspected of anything, and the accuracy of any given stop depends entirely on whether the underlying list is correct and current.

The louder story this year has been deliberate abuse. Milwaukee alone has seen two officers charged: Josue Ayala, who prosecutors say searched a partner’s plate and that partner’s ex nearly 200 times, and internal affairs detective Tehrangi Chapman, who was later charged after allegedly misusing the same system he was assigned to investigate. The Institute for Justice has documented at least a couple dozen cases nationwide of officers using plate readers to track romantic interests, and a Washington Post review found at least 50 officers accused of misusing these systems. Cities are reacting. Chandler, Arizona pulled 40 Flock cameras this month after an audit turned up an anomaly it could not explain through normal police work.

What happened to Newell is different from stalking, but it comes from the same weak point: an audit trail and an accuracy check only work if a person is actually watching them. A separate running tally of reported Flock errors found drivers who were repeatedly stopped after their own plates were mistakenly added to hotlists, and one man who spent 13 days in jail after a camera capture misidentified his car. Flock has said its cameras are about 99% accurate, but at tens of billions of reads a month, even a tiny error rate becomes a steady stream of real people staring down real guns. 

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Illegal Alien Gets 3 Years in Prison for Voting in Elections After Falsely Claiming American Citizenship

An illegal alien was sentenced this week after voting in United States elections by falsely claiming naturalized American citizenship, Department of Justice (DOJ) officials said on Friday.

Carlos Felipe Jaramillo-Grajales, a 55-year-old illegal alien from Colombia, was sentenced to three years in federal prison for making false statements in an application for a U.S. passport, aggravated identity theft, falsely claiming that a Social Security number was his, and falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen to vote in an election.

Likewise, Jaramillo-Grajales was given a deportation order, requiring federal immigration officials to deport him once he has completed his sentence.

“Federal immigration laws serve to safeguard our nation’s borders and protect the integrity of our government,” U.S. Attorney Gregory Kehoe said. “Those who seek to circumvent, exploit, or break these laws will be prosecuted fully.”

According to prosecutors, Jaramillo-Grajales stole the Social Security Number of an American citizen so that he could secure an American passport. The illegal alien used the same Social Security Number to claim American citizenship while obtaining a Florida driver’s license, giving him the ability to register to vote.

Jaramillo-Grajales went on to vote in the 2020 election and several other elections.

“This criminal illegal alien from Colombia has just been sentenced to three years in a federal prison for identity theft and falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen,” Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin said:

Because of his fraud, he was able to obtain a driver’s license and vote in our elections. Thanks to the hard work of the men and women of [Homeland Security Investigations], along with our federal partners, this criminal is out of our communities and, at the end of his sentence, will be removed from our country. DHS will always fight to protect the integrity of our elections, because election security is national security. Only Americans should be electing American leaders.
[Emphasis added]

Prosecutors said that Jaramillo-Grajales, using the stolen Social Security number, married a foreign national who arrived in the U.S. in September 2003 on a B visitor visa. The woman eventually secured naturalized American citizenship in August 2017 before divorcing the illegal alien in January 2020.

Following his divorce, Jaramillo-Grajales left the U.S. for Colombia using his stolen Social Security number while his ex-wife left for Colombia and applied to secure a fiancé visa for him under his real name.

The fiancé visa was approved for Jaramillo-Grajales, allowing him to fly back to the U.S. under his real name, where he remarried his ex-wife in June 2025 before applying for a green card.

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Another Democrat Busted! Former Columbus, Mississippi Vice Mayor Indicted For Money Laundering, Bid Rigging – Attorney Crashes Into Car After Leaving Court! 

Another day, another corrupt Democrat.

Former Columbus, Mississippi, Vice Mayor Joseph Mickens was arrested on Thursday morning for money laundering and bid rigging.

According to court documents, Mickens and local businessman Marcus Dawson cooked up a taxpayer-funded contracting scheme.

Joseph Mickens, who served as the Ward 2 councilman for more than 15 years, along with Dawson, allegedly rigged the bidding process for community center flooring jobs to ensure Mickens’ flooring company would get the bid and finish the work.

The two men lied to the Columbus City Council, claiming that Dawson’s HVAC business had completed the work.

Mickens was booked at Lowndes County Adult Detention Center and was released on a $15,000 bond.

Mickens faces up to 30 years in prison and $500,000+ in fines. Dawson faces up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

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Democrat Massachusetts Mayor Arrested on Fraud and Money Laundering Charges – Used $1.6 Million in Covid Loans as Personal Slush Fund to Pay Off Mortgages

A Democrat Massachusetts mayor was arrested and charged on Friday with fraudulently obtaining over $1.5 million in Covid business loans.

The Mayor of Lawrence, Massachusetts, Brian Depena, used the proceeds from Covid small-business loans to fund his campaign, pay his personal taxes and pay off nearly $900,000 in high-interest, hard-money mortgages on his properties, according to the Department of Justice.

According to the charging documents during the pandemic back in 2020 and 2021, Depena applied for a taxpayer-funded Covid-era Economic Injury Disaster Loans (“EIDL”) for his tire business.

The EIDL loans must be used as working capital to provide relief to businesses that suffered economic losses during Covid.

However, Depena used the Covid loans to fund his struggling campaign, pay off two high-interest mortgages, and pay back taxes.

Per the DOJ:

Depena allegedly caused Tenares Tire to apply for and obtain an EIDL in the amount of $150,000 in June 2020 and then used the majority of those funds as working capital for the business. However, according to the charging documents, Depena needed cash by early 2021. It is alleged that his mayoral campaign was struggling to pay bills, he owed the IRS for back taxes and he owed almost $900,000 to two private, hard money lenders who were charging Depena 12% and 8% interest – significantly more than the EIDL rate of 3.75% – on loans that encumbered various properties Depena owned in Lawrence.

In April 2021, Depena allegedly caused a request for an increase of the Tenares Tire EIDL. On July 14, 2021, the SBA approved an increase of the loan by $350,000, bringing the total Tenares Tire EIDL to $500,000. However, the SBA did not release the funds for another month. While waiting, Depena allegedly sent the following texts (originally in Spanish, here translated to English) to his accountant and financial advisor, who had been assisting Depena with the EIDL application and modification.

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Teen allegedly slaughtered mom, brother after asking AI to create ‘fantasies’ about murdering family

A teenager allegedly killed his mother and brother after using ChatGPT to create chilling “fantasy stories” about murdering his family, according to police.

Arjun Aravind, 17, is accused of killing his mother Sudha Venkatesan, 45, and his brother, Siddharth Aravind, 14, after the two were found slain in their Acton, Mass. home on Tuesday night, according to prosecutors.

The Acton-Boxborough Regional High School student had been demonstrating “concerning behavior” recently before the killings — including using the AI chatbot to create “theoretical ideas or fantasy stories regarding the killing of his family,” Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan said.

Aravind asked ChatGPT to help generate twisted “gothic novel-kind of stories,” Ryan said, according to Boston.com.

Aravind’s mom and brother were found around 6:30 p.m. Tuesday after his father contacted police and reported that a tutor had been unable to get inside their house.

He said he had last spoken to his wife earlier that morning before he left for work. Siddharth Aravind was last seen around noon.

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