Tag: crime

Federal judge dismisses murder charge, rules Luigi Mangione will not face death penalty

Afederal judge on Friday dismissed the murder charge against Luigi Mangione, who allegedly killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December 2024, and ruled that he will not face the death penalty.

Federal prosecutors had sought the death penalty in the case, CNN reported.

U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett for the Southern District of New York, a Biden appointee, dismissed the murder charge because it requires that the killing was committed during another “crime of violence.” Federal prosecutors alleged the other crimes of violence were two stalking charges, arguing Mangione stalked Thompson online and traveled across state lines to kill him.

The judge found that stalking charges are not “crimes of violence” and also dismissed a related firearm offense.

The murder charge is the only count in the federal indictment against Mangione that could have carried a possible death sentence.

Mangione will still face two counts of stalking, both of which have a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole.

Garnett also ruled that Mangione’s backpack, which was recovered when he was arrested, be allowed into trial evidence.

Mangione’s backpack contained a handgun, a loaded magazine, and a red notebook, which are all pieces of evidence that authorities have said tie him to the killing.

His attorneys had argued for the evidence to be barred from trial, claiming that the search of their client’s backpack was illegal because authorities had not yet obtained a warrant and there was no immediate threat to justify a warrantless search.

Sept. 8 is when jury selection for the federal trial is scheduled to begin, with opening statements set for Oct. 13.

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Ex–Nonprofit Leader Who Championed Social Justice Sentenced for COVID Fraud

A former Bostonian of the Year was sentenced in federal court in Boston for using thousands of dollars in donations to Violence in Boston to pay personal expenses and defrauding taxpayers. 

Monica Cannon-Grant, 44, of Taunton, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Angel Kelley to four years’ probation, with six months of home detention and 100 hours of community service. She was also ordered to pay restitution of $106,003 as well as forfeiture in an amount to be decided at a later date. The government recommended a sentence of 18 months in prison.

Cannon-Grant allegedly defrauded the City of Boston out of COVID-19 relief funds and rental assistance money, defrauded the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office out of Community Reinvestment Grant funds, filed false tax returns and failed to file tax returns for two years.

The founder and former Chief Executive Officer of a Boston-based nonprofit was sentenced today in federal court in Boston.

In September 2025, Cannon-Grant pleaded guilty to 18 counts: three counts of wire fraud conspiracy; 10 counts of wire fraud; one count of mail fraud; two counts of filing false tax returns; and two counts of failing to file tax returns. In March 2023, Cannon-Grant was charged along with her co-conspirator and late husband, Clark Grant, in a 27-count superseding indictment. 

Clark Grant’s charges were dismissed in May 2023 due to his death. Cannon-Grant and Clark Grant had previously been charged in an 18-count indictment in March 2022.

In 2020, Cannon-Grant was lauded as a Bostonian of the Year and social justice advocate, recognized for being a “voice for the community” and social justice advocate.

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Protect Survivors, Protect Justice: What Lawmakers Owe Childhood Sexual Abuse Victims

The recent vote for the release of the Epstein files offered something rare in today’s political climate: a bipartisan moment of clarity. For once, lawmakers from both parties stood together to shine a light on abuse that powerful institutions hid for decades and elevated the voices of victims who had been ignored, dismissed, or silenced.

That unity was meaningful, but as encouraging as it was, the reality is that the problem extends far beyond one man or one set of documents.

Across the country, a painful and lingering stain remains for victims of childhood sexual abuse that occurred in institutions we were taught to trust. Survivors include those abused by members of the clergy, students at public and private schools, student athletes betrayed by colleges and universities, and children harmed within the foster care and juvenile justice system.

Though each of their stories differs, the pattern is heartbreakingly similar, where vulnerable children were left unprotected, and institutions became more focused on preserving their own reputation than safeguarding children.

We often do not understand the full scale of abuse or the systems built to hide it until survivors step forward through civil lawsuits, often taking decades, if survivors decide to even come forward in the first place. Civil litigation provides one of the only mechanisms that forces open the curtain and compels institutions to produce records, answer questions, and face accountability. This process gives the public a clearer picture of how this abuse occurred, how to prevent abuse from happening again, and exposes perpetrators still in the community.

However, none of this happens automatically, and right now, that ability is at risk.

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ICE agents chase down migrant sex predator after judge allows him to stroll out of NYC courthouse

An alleged crack-smoking, sexual-predator migrant wanted by ICE was allowed to flee through a back door of a Manhattan courthouse — infuriating federal agents, The Post has learned.

Gerardo Miguel Mora, 45, was arrested Thursday for shoplifting and possession of stolen property after allegedly snatching $130 in items from an H&M display case in Midtown that day, court records show.

Mora, whose country of origin was not disclosed, was collared on the Upper West Side on Jan. 7 for possession of alleged crack cocaine, according to a criminal complaint. That case is pending in court.

In 2011, Mora was busted for attempted rape and strangulation after he allegedly followed a 21-year-old woman home in Midtown, choked her and tried to remove her clothes, police sources said.

He was stopped by a bystander who heard the woman’s cries and came to her aid, holding Mora down until cops arrived, the sources said. 

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Boston BLM Fraudster Who Scammed More Than $100,000 Gets Sentenced to ZERO Jail Time

Monica Cannon-Grant is a Boston based Black Lives Matter activist who stole more than $100,000 in COVID funds and other financial resources to fund her lavish lifestyle. She was just sentenced to ZERO jail time.

She got six months of home confinement, followed by four years of probation.

Democrats just spent more time than that saying ‘no one is above the law’ over and over and over again. It seems some people are actually above the law.

This is from the U.S. Attorneys Office in Massachusetts:

Former Bostonian of the Year Sentenced for Fraud

The founder and former Chief Executive Officer of a Boston-based nonprofit was sentenced today in federal court in Boston for using thousands of dollars in donations to Violence in Boston (VIB) to pay for personal expenses; defrauding the City of Boston out of COVID-19 relief funds and rental assistance money; defrauding the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office out of Community Reinvestment Grant funds; filing false tax returns; and failing to file tax returns for two years.

Monica Cannon-Grant, 44, of Taunton, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Angel Kelley to four years’ probation, with six months of home detention and 100 hours of community service. She was also ordered to pay restitution of $106,003 as well as forfeiture in an amount to be decided at a later date. The government recommended a sentence of 18 months in prison.

From 2017 through at least 2020, Cannon-Grant represented herself as an uncompensated VIB director to donors and other charitable institutions when, in reality, she and her late husband agreed to utilize their control over VIB’s accounts and funds to pay for personal expenditures through cash withdrawals, cashed checks, wire transfers to personal bank accounts and debit purchases. Cannon-Grant also applied for, and certified the applications for, grants offered by public and private entities that included materially false representations. For example, Cannon-Grant conspired to use VIB to defraud the Boston Resiliency Fund (BRF), a charitable fund established by the City of Boston to provide aid to Boston residents during the COVID-19 pandemic. After receiving approximately $53,977 in pandemic relief funds, Cannon-Grant withdrew approximately $30,000 in cash from the VIB bank account, made deposits of $5,200 and $1,000 into her personal checking account, and made payments on her personal auto loan and car insurance policy. Cannon-Grant did not disclose any of these personal expenses to BRF and, instead, falsely reported to BRF that all of its grant funds had been appropriately expended.

Cannon-Grant also conspired to defraud Boston’s Office of Housing Stability by concealing thousands of dollars of household income in order to obtain $12,600 in rental assistance from the City of Boston. Instead of truthfully reporting accurate information about the family’s earnings and benefits, Cannon-Grant and her late husband misrepresented their actual household income to obtain rent relief funds that were intended to aid Boston residents who were facing housing insecurity.

This is outrageous.

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Mexican National Couple Sentenced in Counterfeit ID, Passport Scheme

A Mexican national couple sentenced for making and selling thousands of counterfeit identifications to clients throughout the United States, announced U.S. Attorney Clint Johnson.

U.S. District Judge Sara E. Hill sentenced Karina Garcia-Salazar, 47, for conspiracy to transfer identification documents and conspiracy to possess with intent to use or transfer five or more Documents. 

Garcia-Salazar’s co-defendant, Jorge Augusto Prieto-Gamboa, 41, was sentenced in December 2025 for conspiracy to possess five or more documents with the intent to transfer. Judge Hill ordered Prieto-Gamboa to serve 15 months of imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release.

From August 2020 through their arrest in February 2025, Garcia-Salazar and Prieto-Gamboa worked together to create thousands of fake immigration documents. Court records show that the defendants sold the fake documents in several controlled buys orchestrated by agents. During those buys, agents confirmed that Garcia-Salazar and Prieto-Gamboa were working together to sell identification cards and Social Security cards.

A search warrant was served on their home in Tulsa. 

During that search, agents found at least 67 fake completed documents and seized several electronic devices for further search. After searching their devices, agents found more than 2,000 different identification documents, including Social Security cards, lawful permanent resident cards, state driver’s licenses and ID cards, foreign ID cards, and passports. 

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Open-Source AI Models Vulnerable to Criminal Misuse, Researchers Warn

Hackers and other criminals can easily commandeer computers operating open-source large language models outside the guardrails and constraints of the major artificial-intelligence platforms, creating security risks and vulnerabilities, researchers said on Thursday.

Hackers could target the computers running the LLMs and direct them to carry out spam operations, phishing content creation or disinformation campaigns, evading platform security protocols, the researchers said.

The research, carried out jointly by cybersecurity companies SentinelOne and Censys over the course of 293 days and shared exclusively with Reuters, offers a new window into the scale of potentially illicit use cases for thousands of open-source LLM deployments.

These include hacking, hate speech and harassment, violent or gore content, personal data theft, scams or fraud, and in some cases child sexual abuse material, the researchers said.

While thousands of open-source LLM variants exist, a significant portion of the LLMs on the internet-accessible hosts are variants of Meta’s Llama, Google DeepMind’s Gemma, and others, according to the researchers. While some of the open-source models include guardrails, the researchers identified hundreds of instances where guardrails were explicitly removed.

AI industry conversations about security controls are “ignoring this kind of surplus capacity that is clearly being utilized for all kinds of different stuff, some of it legitimate, some obviously criminal,” said Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade, executive director for intelligence and security research at SentinelOne.

Guerrero-Saade likened the situation to an “iceberg” that is not being properly accounted for across the industry and open-source community.

The research analyzed publicly accessible deployments of open-source LLMs deployed through Ollama, a tool that allows people and organizations to run their own versions of various large-language models.

The researchers were able to see system prompts, which are the instructions that dictate how the model behaves, in roughly a quarter of the LLMs they observed. Of those, they determined that 7.5% could potentially enable harmful activity.

Roughly 30% of the hosts observed by the researchers are operating out of China, and about 20% in the U.S.

Rachel Adams, the CEO and founder of the Global Center on AI Governance, said in an email that once open models are released, responsibility for what happens next becomes shared across the ecosystem, including the originating labs.

“Labs are not responsible for every downstream misuse (which are hard to anticipate), but they retain an important duty of care to anticipate foreseeable harms, document risks, and provide mitigation tooling and guidance, particularly given uneven global enforcement capacity,” Adams said.

A spokesperson for Meta declined to respond to questions about developers’ responsibilities for addressing concerns around downstream abuse of open-source models and how concerns might be reported, but noted the company’s Llama Protection tools for Llama developers, and the company’s Meta Llama Responsible Use Guide.

Microsoft AI Red Team Lead Ram Shankar Siva Kumar said in an email that Microsoft believes open-source models “play an important role” in a variety of areas, but, “at the same time, we are clear-eyed that open models, like all transformative technologies, can be misused by adversaries if released without appropriate safeguards.”

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Transgender Antifa Activist Who Threatened Rep. Nancy Mace Charged With Attempted Murder in Oregon

Last May, a trans activist and Antifa member made a death threat against Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina.

He is now behind bars in Oregon, having been charged with the attempted murder of another man. It just goes to show a lot of these people are completely off balance and will repeatedly cause trouble until they are stopped.

NewsBusters reports:

Antifa Transgender Who Threatened Rep. Mace in 2025 Charged with Shooting, Attempted Murder of Oregon Man

A biologically-male transgender member of the domestic terrorist group Antifa – who was not prosecuted when he posted an implicit death threat against South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace last May – is now in a women’s prison in Oregon and facing charges of attempted murder.

“This blood is on the hands of every prosecutor who looked at this threat and looked away. I pray for the safety of the women he’s housed with,” Rep. Mace said in a statement Wednesday, reacting to the news and recounting the death threat made against her by “a transgender named ‘Rem Heathen’ whose real name is Michael Richard Fadich, the Antifa violent extremist”:

“In May 2025, Fadich posted a graphic on Instagram depicting a gun pointed directly at Rep. Mace’s face. The message was unmistakable: he wanted her dead.

“The Office of Rep. Mace reported this threat. Prosecutors did nothing. Now, eight months later, he is charged with attempted murder after allegedly shooting someone in Portland just last month. A man is in the hospital because the system failed to stop a violent extremist when it had the chance.”

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Lucy Letby is victim of greatest miscarriage of justice in decades, says cop who caught ‘Angel of Death’ Beverley Allitt

THE cop who caught serial baby-killer ­Beverley Allitt has told of his belief that jailed nurse Lucy Letby is innocent of the crime.

Retired Det Supt Stuart Clifton has been reviewing the evidence against the 36-year-old — serving 15 whole-life sentences for murdering seven babies and attempting to kill seven others at Countess of Chester hospital.

And Stuart, who nailed Angel of Death Allitt in 1991, said: “This is likely the greatest miscarriage of justice this century .”

The development comes after police last week confirmed Letby faces no further charges — offering her hope that the Criminal Cases Review Commission will sanction a new appeal.

And a hearing yesterday laid the groundwork to reopen inquests into Letby’s victims.

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Fetterman: ‘About Two-Thirds’ of Those Deported by ICE Are Criminals

On Tuesday’s broadcast of Newsmax TV’s “American Agenda,” Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) stated that “about two-thirds of those ICE is deporting are” criminals, but a lot of the tactics the agency is using need to be changed.

Fetterman said, “I don’t agree with many of those tactics” used by ICE and stated that ICE should “stand down” in Minneapolis.

Later, he stated that the administration should “re-focus on securing our border — and that’s been successful — and deporting all of the criminals, I think we can all agree with that. And I have also been mentioning, too, the latest statistics that I have seen, about two-thirds of those ICE is deporting are criminal[s]. And, again, I think we should talk more about that, too. I think that’s a good thing.”

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