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Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Member of @FARC_COLOMBIA Sentenced to 27 Years in Prison for Hostage-Taking of Three U.S. Citizens

Diego Alfonso Navarrete Beltran, 43, a member of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias Colombianas (FARC) terrorist organization, was sentenced in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to 27 years in prison on hostage-taking charges stemming from the 2003 kidnappings of three U.S. citizens in Colombia.

The sentencing was announced by Assistant Attorney General for National Security John P. Carlin, U.S. Attorney Channing D. Phillips of the District of Columbia, and Special Agent in Charge George L. Piro of the FBI’s Miami Division.

Navarrete Beltran was extradited from Colombia to the United States in November 2014 to face charges in a superseding indictment that was returned in February 2011. He pleaded guilty on Aug. 26, 2015, to three counts of hostage-taking. He was sentenced by Senior U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the District of Columbia. Navarrete Beltran is among three FARC leaders who have been convicted for their roles in the hostage-taking.

“Diego Alfonso Navarrete Beltran participated in the hostage-taking and captivity of three Americans by the FARC, a Colombian terrorist organization,” said Assistant Attorney General Carlin. “This case underscores our resolve to hold accountable those who target our citizens with violence anywhere in the world, no matter how long it takes.”

“Diego Alfonso Navarrete Beltran and other FARC guerillas ruthlessly subjected their American hostages to constant threats of violence while holding them in one camp after another in the remote jungles of Colombia,” said U.S. Attorney Phillips. “For over 16 months, this defendant was among the armed guards who prevented their escape. Today’s 27-year sentence provides justice for the three victims who were subjected to repeated barbaric abuse by the defendant and others while part of this terrorist organization.”

“Diego Alfonso Navarrete Beltran now faces a long time behind bars for his participation in the hostage-taking of three U.S. Citizens in Colombia,” said Special Agent in Charge Piro. “To all hostage-takers the message is clear: target our citizens with violence anywhere in the world and we will hold you accountable for your actions.”

According to a statement of offense submitted as part of the plea hearing, the FARC is an armed, violent organization in Colombia, formed in 1964 as the armed wing of the Colombian Communist Party. It has evolved into a major armed force financed by drug trafficking, hostage-taking and extortion. International human rights organizations have repeatedly accused the FARC of serious crimes, including kidnapping, murder, use of land mines, threats, the recruitment of minors, forced displacement and hostage-taking. The FARC was designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. Secretary of State in 1997 and remains so designated.

As described in the statement of offense, Navarrete Beltran was a member of the First Front in the FARC’s Eastern Bloc.

In his plea, he admitted taking part in the hostage-taking of three U.S. citizens, Marc D. Gonsalves, Thomas R. Howes and Keith Stansell. These three individuals, along with Thomas Janis, a U.S. citizen, and Sergeant Luis Alcides Cruz, a Colombian citizen, were seized on Feb. 13, 2003, by the FARC after their single engine aircraft made a crash landing near Florencia, Colombia. Janis and Cruz were murdered at the crash site by members of the FARC.

For the next five and a half years, according to the statement of offense, Gonsalves, Howes, Stansell and many others were held prisoners by the FARC and used to bargain with the Colombian government. Along with about a dozen Colombian hostages, they were forced to march from one site to another to prevent their rescue. They were threatened, chained and forced to participate in proof-of-life videos. In early October 2006, the hostages were delivered to the FARC’s Eastern Bloc’s First Front and were held prisoners by the First Front of the FARC.

From October 2006 through mid-June 2008, according to the statement of offense, Navarrete Beltran and other guerillas kept the hostages under the control of the FARC’s First Front. In particular, Navarrete Beltran often served as an armed guard of the American hostages.

In July 2008, the Colombian military conducted an operation which resulted in the rescue of the hostages. All told, members of the FARC held the Americans hostage for 1,967 days.

Monday, November 16, 2015

Conviction in Largest Single No Fault Automobile Insurance Fraud Scheme

Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that MICHAEL DANILOVICH was found guilty on racketeering conspiracy, securities fraud, health care fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering charges following a five-week jury trial before United States District Judge Deborah A. Batts. The jury convicted DANILOVICH of racketeering arising out of his operation, from 2007 through 2012, of the largest single no fault automobile insurance fraud scheme ever charged; his operation, from 2007 to 2009, of two investment fraud schemes, Lyons Ward & Associates and the Rockford Group; and his attempted operation, from 2011 to 2012, of a third investment fraud scheme, Baron & Caplan, including after he was arrested and released on bail in this case.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said: “Michael Danilovich has been convicted by a unanimous jury of committing several frauds. As the jury found, he took a lead role in scamming insurance companies of over $100 million in fraudulent medical treatments and in engaging in other investment scams that swindled investors out of another $18 million. Today’s verdict ensures that Danilovich will be punished for the wide-ranging frauds he perpetrated.”

According to the Superseding Indictment and evidence admitted at trial:

From 2007 through 2012, DANILOVICH was a leader of an enterprise engaged in a pattern of racketeering that included a massive scheme to defraud automobile insurance companies under New York’s no fault insurance law, multiple securities fraud schemes, money laundering, and the operation of illegal gambling businesses.

Under New York State Law, every vehicle registered in the State is required to have no fault automobile insurance, which enables the driver and passengers of a registered and insured vehicle to obtain benefits of up to $50,000 per person for injuries sustained in an automobile accident, regardless of fault (the “No Fault Law”). The No Fault Law requires prompt payment for medical treatment, thereby obviating the need for claimants to file personal injury lawsuits in order to be reimbursed. Under the No Fault Law, patients can assign their right to reimbursement from an insurance company to others, including medical clinics that provide treatment for their injuries. New York State Law also requires that all medical clinics in the State be incorporated, owned, operated, and controlled by a licensed medical practitioner in order to be eligible for reimbursement under the No Fault Law. Insurance companies will not honor claims for medical treatments from a medical clinic that is not actually owned, operated, and controlled by a licensed medical professional.

From 2007 through 2012, DANILOVICH’s organization defrauded automobile insurance companies of more than $100 million by, among other things, creating and operating medical clinics that provided unnecessary and excessive medical treatments in order to take advantage of the No Fault Law. In addition, Danilovich’s organization fraudulently owned and controlled more than a dozen medical professional corporations (“PCs”)—including no fault clinics, MRI offices, and acupuncture and chiropractic PCs—by paying licensed medical professionals to use their licenses to incorporate the professional corporations. DANILOVICH and his co-conspirators paid kickbacks of thousands of dollars to runners to recruit patients to receive the same battery of tests and treatments, and received kickbacks from other co-conspirators for referring patients for additional unnecessary treatments. All told, Danilovich’s organization billed insurance companies for tens of millions of dollars in fraudulent medical treatments. Furthermore, DANILOVICH and his co-conspirators laundered the proceeds of the fraud through check cashing entities and shell companies, and used the money to pay for luxury cars, watches, and vacations.

In addition to the no fault insurance fraud scheme, DANILOVICH was convicted for operating two investment fraud schemes that swindled innocent victims out of nearly $18 million. Both schemes—Lyons Ward & Associates and the Rockford Group—purported to be settlement claims funding companies that invested in lawsuits in return for a portion of future settlements. DANILOVICH also attempted to operate a third scheme, Baron & Caplan, including after he was arrested and released on bail in this case. As part of these schemes, DANILOVICH and his co-conspirators created bogus documents and account statements used by cold-callers to solicit victims through false representations. In reality, there was no investment fund at all; instead, DANILOVICH and his co-conspirators simply stole the money invested by victims and laundered the proceeds by wiring them overseas to shell companies in Eastern Europe, which were then turned into cash in the United States.

DANILOVICH’s organization also operated high-stakes illegal poker games and illegal sports books.

DANILOVICH was convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit racketeering, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. In addition, DANILOVICH was convicted of conspiracies to commit securities fraud, health care fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering, as well as substantive counts of securities fraud, health care fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering, which, in total, carry a maximum sentence of 260 years in prison. In total, DANILOVICH faces a maximum sentence of 280 years in prison. DANILOVICH is scheduled to be sentenced on March 8, 2016, at 11:00 a.m., before Judge Batts. The maximum potential sentences are prescribed by Congress and are provided here for informational purposes only, as any sentencing of the defendant will be determined by the judge.

DANILOVICH, 41, of Brooklyn, New York, is the thirty-sixth defendant convicted in this case. DANILOVICH was remanded pending sentencing following his conviction.

At DANILOVICH’s first trial in the fall of 2013, a mistrial was declared after the jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict on all counts.

Friday, November 13, 2015

Vincent Asaro #NotGuilty in ‘Goodfellas’ Lufthansa heist

Vincent Asaro, the reputed mobster charged in connection with the notorious 1978 Lufthansa robbery, walked out of federal court in Brooklyn on Thursday a free man after a jury cleared him of racketeering and other charges.

The verdicts, delivered after little more than two days of deliberations, left many in the courtroom stunned, most visibly prosecutors from the United States attorney’s office, which had spent years building a case against Mr. Asaro, 80, with testimony from high-ranking Mafia figures and recordings by an informer for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. But the case relied heavily on the cooperation of some of those Mafia figures, some of them admitted killers, and the jury rejected the government’s accusation that Mr. Asaro helped carry out a criminal enterprise engaged in murder and robbery, most infamously the Lufthansa robbery, which figured prominently in the plot of the 1990 Martin Scorsese film “Goodfellas.”

When the juror chosen to deliver the verdict said “Not guilty” on the first count — the racketeering charge, by far the most complicated and serious of the charges — there was a startled silence in the courtroom.

After the “not guilty” verdict on the second and third counts, for extortion, Mr. Asaro pumped his right fist in the air three times. Once the jury left, he clapped sharply, then hugged his lawyers. “Your Honor, thank you very much,” he said to the judge, Allyne R. Ross.

As he walked out of the courthouse on Cadman Plaza, Mr. Asaro, who had been jailed since January 2014, raised his hands in the air and shouted, “Free!”

Flanked by his lawyers, Elizabeth Macedonio and Diane Ferrone, he fielded a flurry of questions from reporters, who asked what he was going to do (“play some paddleball”), where he was heading (“to have a good meal and see my family”) and what he was going to eat (“anything but a bologna sandwich”). Indeed, he appeared delighted by the commotion his acquittal had created. “John Gotti didn’t get this much attention,” he said of the Gambino boss, who was notoriously hard to convict.

The jury, in Federal District Court, had begun deliberations late on Monday and continued through the week, with a break on Wednesday for Veterans Day. The jurors, whom the judge granted anonymity, did not appear to depart through any public areas or exits in the court.

To secure a conviction on the racketeering count — for which Mr. Asaro might have faced up to life in prison — prosecutors would have had to prove two or more of the 14 racketeering acts they alleged.

During a three-week trial, prosecutors argued that Mr. Asaro, whose father and grandfather were members of the Mafia, had committed murder and robbery and performed shakedowns and other crimes on behalf of his Mafia family, the Bonannos.

The most famous one was the robbery at the Lufthansa terminal at Kennedy International Airport. It was then said to be the largest cash robbery in United States history. Mr. Asaro helped plan it, prosecutors said, and his accomplices stole $5 million in cash and $1 million in jewels from a cargo vault.

Although investigators had long suspected the Mafia’s involvement, they had not brought charges against any reputed Mafia member until the case against Mr. Asaro, leaving the matter officially unsolved for decades.

Prosecutors brought a queue of informers who testified about Mr. Asaro’s role in the Mafia and in various crimes. Evidence also included surveillance photos from the 1970s on, and the testimony of several F.B.I. agents who detailed the man’s comings and goings for several decades. But the key to the prosecution’s case was an informer named Gaspare Valenti, Mr. Asaro’s cousin. Tired of Mr. Asaro’s berating him, and broke, Mr. Valenti testified he approached the F.B.I. in 2008 and began telling them about Mr. Asaro’s crimes. That had helped prosecutors link the Lufthansa crime, and many others, to Mr. Asaro. Mr. Valenti also recorded Mr. Asaro from 2010 to 2013.

In her closing argument, Ms. Macedonio attacked Mr. Valenti’s credibility. “Gaspare Valenti was an experienced liar,” she said. “Once you eliminate Gaspare as a reliable person,” she said, “then you won’t be able to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt with regards to the crimes alleged against Vincent Asaro.”

Ms. Macedonio also argued that some other prosecution evidence — surveillance photos in which Mr. Asaro was not committing crimes, phone books from other Mafia members that listed him in them — proved nothing.

The crimes prosecutors accused Mr. Asaro of committing as part of the criminal enterprise included murder. They said he killed a man in 1969, Paul Katz, who owned a Queens warehouse where Mr. Asaro and James Burke, a Mafia associate known as Jimmy the Gent, would unload their goods. After Mr. Asaro and Mr. Burke were arrested at the warehouse, Mr. Valenti testified, they began to suspect Mr. Katz of working with the police.

One morning in 1969, Mr. Burke and Mr. Asaro arranged to meet Mr. Valenti at a house his father was building in Queens. Mr. Valenti said they brought materials for cracking into concrete, and brought Mr. Katz’s body. Mr. Valenti said Mr. Asaro revealed that they had strangled Mr. Katz with a dog chain and that they then buried him underneath the basement concrete.

In the 1980s, Mr. Valenti said, he and Mr. Asaro’s son, Jerome, moved the body after Mr. Burke, who was in prison at the time, “caught a delusion” and worried that the body would be found.

In 2013, federal agents cracked open the Queens basement and found traces of clothing and bones from Mr. Katz, according to trial testimony. Mr. Katz’s son testified at the trial, describing how his father said just before his disappearance that he was going to move the family to the country. His father was, in fact, cooperating with the police, according to trial testimony and records.

Mr. Valenti described the Lufthansa robbery in his testimony, giving what seemed to be a remarkable firsthand view of how one of the Mafia’s most noted robberies unfolded.

Mr. Burke had organized the robbery, he said, with Mr. Asaro helping. In the dark early-morning hours, a group of Mafia members and associates drove up to the Lufthansa terminal at Kennedy Airport. Several went around the front to subdue the employees, while Mr. Valenti and another man forced a guard to open the overhead door to the terminal. They went upstairs, where they burst into the vault. They thought there would be only a couple million dollars in cash; instead, there was $5 million, along with emeralds, diamonds and gold chains.

The robbery was front page news, and barely a decade later found its way onto the big screen, in “Goodfellas.”

As Mr. Asaro packed into the passenger seat of a white Mercedes outside the courthouse, he offered some words of caution: “Don’t believe everything you see in the movies,” he said.

Still, Mr. Asaro could not help taking a last jab at the prosecution. “Don’t let them see the body in the trunk.”

Thanks to Stephanie Clifford.

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Folk Nation Gang Member Sentenced to Five Consecutive Terms of Life Imprisonment

Jamal Laurent, a member of a set of the violent street gang Folk Nation operating primarily in the Crown Heights and East Flatbush neighborhoods of Brooklyn, was sentenced to five consecutive terms of life imprisonment at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn, New York. Last week, on November 6, 2015, one of Laurent’s co-defendants, Trevelle Merritt, was sentenced to 40 years of imprisonment. On March 18, 2015, both defendants, along with a third defendant, Yasser Ashburn, were convicted, following a jury trial, of racketeering and racketeering conspiracy, including as racketeering acts the murders of Courtney Robinson, Brent Duncan, and Dasta James, and related crimes. Ashburn is scheduled to be sentenced on January 8, 2016, and faces a mandatory term of life imprisonment.

The sentence was announced by Robert L. Capers, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York; Diego G. Rodriguez, Assistant Director-in-Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), New York Field Office; and William J. Bratton, Commissioner, New York City Police Department (NYPD).

“The defendants committed a string of shootings, robberies, and other senseless acts of violence that for years terrorized the law-abiding members of their community,” stated United States Attorney Capers. “We hope that the sentences imposed give a measure of comfort and closure to the victims and their families, and serve as a warning and deterrent to those who would continue to commit crimes in the name of this violent gang.” Mr. Capers expressed his grateful appreciation to the FBI and the NYPD, the agencies that led the government’s investigation.

From approximately 2007 until their arrests, the defendants, all members of the Folk Nation gang, were responsible for numerous acts of gang-related violence, including homicides, non-fatal shootings, and robberies in and around Crown Heights and East Flatbush, as well as elsewhere in the tri-state area.

During the course of the summer of 2010, Laurent committed seven armed robberies and three shootings. On June 19, 2010, Laurent shot and killed 18-year-old Brent Duncan while Duncan sat in his car outside a party in Brooklyn. Laurent subsequently told a friend that he shot Duncan because Duncan was a member of the rival Crips gang, but no evidence ever established that Duncan belonged to, or was even associated with, that gang.

On July 7, 2010, the same day that Laurent robbed three individuals at gunpoint, Laurent also attempted to murder Louis Ivies, who Laurent believed to be a member of the Crips. After greeting Ivies on the street, Laurent removed a gun from his waistband and fired at him eight times, hitting him five times. Ivies was seriously injured but ultimately survived.

During a three-week period in January 2011, Merritt and fellow gang members participated in a robbery spree that culminated in murder. In the first two robberies, Merritt and others robbed two residents of the Ebbets Field Houses of their cell phones. On January 28, 2011, Merritt, Laurent, and another man attempted to rob Dasta James at his residence on McKeever Place in Brooklyn. During the course of the robbery, James was shot in the back and head. He was taken to Kings County Hospital, where he died.

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Scam Timeshare Telemarketer Sentenced to Federal Prison #Karma

Senior U.S. District Judge John Antoon, II has sentenced Tammie Lynn Cline (33, Leominster, MA) to two years and six months in federal prison for her role in the operation of a boiler room. She also was ordered to pay more than $1.2 million in restitution to her victims. Cline pleaded guilty on July 17, 2015.

According to court documents, Cline and her codefendant, Mark Gardner (28, Osteen, FL), operated a boiler room in Central Florida. Along with the telemarketers who worked at their call center, they would make unsolicited calls to owners of timeshare properties located throughout the United States. During those calls, they claimed that they worked for Universal Timeshare Sales Associates (UTSA) out of Beaverton, Oregon, that UTSA had a purchaser who was interested in buying a timeshare, and that the timeshare owner just needed to pay a fee between $1,600 and $2,200 for the sale to proceed.

In order to convince timeshare owners to pay the fee, Gardner, Cline, and their telemarketers would sometimes claim that an interested purchaser was present in the showroom ready to buy a timeshare, that a buyer had already deposited money into an escrow account for the sale, or that the sale would take place in about 90 days. Those representations were false. The timeshares were not sold as had been promised, and members of the conspiracy would deny or ignore requests for refunds, and would dispute chargebacks with the credit card companies.

In total, victims lost more than $1.2 million due to operation of the telemarketing call center.

In May 2013, the Federal Trade Commission and the Florida Attorney General’s Office filed a civil action against Gardner, Cline, and others in federal court. In June 2014, the district court entered a permanent injunction against them related to certain telemarketing practices.

Gardner previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud and money laundering. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for December 3, 2015.

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