What is the DEA's #360Strategy?

The United States Drug Enforcement Administration announced Pittsburgh as the pilot city for a comprehensive law enforcement and prevention “360 Strategy” to help cities dealing with a heroin and prescription drug abuse epidemic, and its associated violent crime. DEA Special Agent in Charge for the Philadelphia Division, Gary Tuggle made the announcement along with United States Attorney David J. Hickton of the Western District of Pennsylvania and several local and federal agencies and organizations working in the fields of law enforcement, pharmacology and substance abuse prevention and treatment.

“The work of law enforcement to remove the traffickers and the work of our partner agencies doing treatment and prevention in Pittsburgh has already had an impact on the city’s drug problem,” said Tuggle. “The 360 strategy brings together for the first time, the agencies that have dealt with this problem separately, into a comprehensive and sustained effort to not only fight drug traffickers but also to make communities resilient to their return.”

The DEA 360 Strategy comprises a three-fold approach to fighting drug traffickers:

• Provide DEA leadership with coordinated DEA enforcement actions targeting all levels of drug trafficking organizations and violent gangs supplying drugs in our neighborhoods, as we have been doing with ongoing law enforcement operations.
• Have a long-lasting impact by engaging drug manufacturers, wholesalers, practitioners and pharmacists to increase awareness of the heroin and prescription drug problem and push for responsible prescribing and use of these medications throughout the medical community.
• Change attitudes through community outreach and partnership with local organizations following DEA enforcement actions to equip and empower communities with the tools to fight the heroin and prescription drug epidemic.

“We are grateful that DEA, through its 360 initiative will contribute to the significant efforts already underway in Western Pennsylvania to reduce heroin and opioid overdoses,” said Hickton.  “Pittsburgh has the opportunity to lead the nation due to the strong commitment and cooperation among our leadership, law enforcement and citizens.”

“The community outreach aspect of this program may be the most important to long-term success,” added Tuggle. “The 360 Strategy brings to bear the concerted efforts of substance abuse and prevention experts to addresses four key groups by engaging in dialogue, providing information and resources to educate young people about the consequences of drug abuse and trafficking:

• Parents/caregivers in the home
• Educators and the classroom
• After school organizations such as Boy and Girl Scouts and athletic associations
• The workplace.”

In the short term, the goal of the 360 strategy is to provide as much information as possible in many different forms to reach young people. Officials will work to form a “Community Alliance” that will comprise key leaders from law enforcement, prevention, treatment, the judicial system, education, business, government, civic organizations, faith communities, media, social services and others, to form the core of a long-term group that will cross disciplines to help carry the prevention and treatment messages to the local population during the critical post-operation timeframe.

In the future, DEA and its partners also plan to host multi-day summits to bring community leaders together to look for sustainable, impactful efforts to address drug abuse, addiction, trafficking and the violence that accompanies it. Other partners will include the Department of Justice Violence Reduction Network, Health and Human Services, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Centers for Disease Control, Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America, Partnership for Drug-Free Kids, and many others.

“DEA’s 360 Strategy recognizes that we need to utilize every community resource possible to reach young people and attack the heroin and prescription drug epidemic at multiple levels,” said Tuggle. “This three-sided strategy brings together everyone who has a stake in the successful outcome of this pilot program.  This could be a model for many other communities.”

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Crime and Immorality in the Catholic Church

Written by a well-known former Franciscan priest, the stories in Crime and Immorality in the Catholic Church, about what some priests were doing in the 1950s could come from today's front pages. But the focus is not so much on the priesthood, as on the parishioners.

To investigate his theory that the Catholic religion promotes criminal behavior rather than preventing it, McLoughlin conducted a survey of all the prisons in the country in 1960. In every state, the percentage of Catholic inmates was greater than the state's percentage of Catholics in the population, even using the church's inflated figures. Then he did a similar survey of institutionalized mental patients, exploring the theory that Catholic beliefs drive people crazy, and came up with the same results. This was not the most scientific research, but no one else was doing anything better.

He argued that crime and poverty are worse in countries with a long history of Catholic control of religious institutions.

In this and other books, McLoughlin criticized how priests were trained, and how Catholic children were trained, especially those who attend parochial schools. If the Church today is somewhat more enlightened, perhaps he should be given some of the credit.

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Former Corrections Officer, John Grosso, Sentenced to 2 Years in Prison for Accepting Cash Bribes in Exchange for Smuggling Contraband into County Correctional Facility

A former Essex County corrections officer was sentenced to 24 months in prison for accepting bribes in exchange for smuggling contraband, including cell phones and tobacco, into the Essex County Correctional Facility, a federal pretrial detention facility, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced.

John Grosso, 42, of Belleville, New Jersey, previously pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Stanley R. Chesler to an information charging him with one count of conspiring to commit extortion under color of official right. Judge Chesler imposed the sentence today in Newark federal court.

According to the documents filed in this case and statements made in court:

Grosso, a former corrections officer at the Essex County Correctional Facility, admitted that in December 2013, he agreed to accept cash bribes in return for his assistance smuggling cell phones and cigarettes to an inmate. Grosso met with the inmate’s relative in Secaucus, New Jersey, to accept the contraband and bribe before delivering the items to the inmate.

In addition to the prison term, Judge Chesler sentenced Grosso to one year of supervised release.

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John Hamilton, Former Business Manager of Operating Engineers Local 324 Indicted for Extortion and Embezzlement Schemes

The former top elected official of the 18,000 member Operating Engineers Local 324, International Union of Operating Engineers, was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of extortion, embezzlement, money laundering and conspiracy, United States Attorney Barbara McQuade announced today.

McQuade was joined in the announcement by James Vanderberg, Special Agent in Charge of the Department of Labor, Office of Investigations, Office of Labor Racketeering and Fraud Investigations, Special Agent in Charge David Gelios, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Detroit Division, Ian Burg, District Director of the Department of Labor, Office of Labor Management Standards, Special Agent in Charge Jared Koopman, Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigations, and Regional Director Joe Rivers of the Employee Benefits Security Administration.

Indicted was John Hamilton, 61, of Rivera Beach, Florida.

The nine-count Indictment alleges that Hamilton used his position as Business Manager of Local 324 to personally enrich himself through a series of illegal schemes. Local 324 represents heavy equipment and crane operators throughout Michigan, and Hamilton served as the union’s top elected official from 2003 through 2012. Hamilton is charged with extorting business agents and other employees of Local 324 to each pay $5,000 of their salaries per year into what was called the “Team Hamilton Slate Fund.” Ostensibly, the slate fund was to be used for union election campaign expenses. However, Hamilton instead used a significant portion of the money that was extorted from union business agents for his own personal benefit. Hamilton threatened union employees with termination if they complained about the payments to his slate fund. In fact, in 2010, Hamilton fired one business agent who had complained about the payments to Hamilton’s fund. Hamilton used some of the money that he extorted to pay for meals and liquor, as well as $5,000 to his daughter as a wedding present. After losing re-election in an August 2012 membership vote, Hamilton then took for himself $71,000 from the slate fund, as well as distributing more than $35,000 each to Steven Minella and David Hart, two other top Local 324 officials. Hamilton structured and laundered this money by distributing it in a series of seventeen checks with false dates, all for amounts under $10,000. Minella and Hart, the former President and Chief of Staff of the union, respectively, both pleaded guilty earlier this year to felonies for helping to conceal Hamilton’s extortion scheme.

In another scheme, Hamilton is charged with embezzling union funds by giving himself a $97,000 per year raise in October 2009. When a former President of Local 324 raised objections to the $97,000 raise, Hamilton terminated the President. In addition, Hamilton created fraudulent minutes of the union’s Executive Board in an effort to justify the raise.

Hamilton also is charged with embezzling Local 324 funds and Local 324 pension funds by spending more than $50,000 on special rims for his own union-issued Cadillac DTS, as well as expensive meals and liquor at restaurants for little or no union business purpose.

Finally, Hamilton is charged with an honest services fraud conspiracy, in which Hamilton accepted work worth thousands of dollars on his personal residence by a union contractor in exchange for Hamilton’s directing more than $300,000 in Local 324 business to the contractor.

Upon conviction, Hamilton would face a maximum of 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 on each of the four counts of extortion, conspiracy to commit extortion, money laundering, and conspiracy to commit honest services mail and wire fraud in the Indictment. He also faces a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each of five counts of conspiracy to embezzle union funds, conspiracy to embezzle pension funds, embezzlement of union funds, and attempted structuring of financial transactions.

An indictment is only a charge, and a defendant is presumed not guilty unless he is convicted at trial by a jury.

“Labor unions exist for the benefit of their members, not to line the pockets of the union leaders,” McQuade said. “Hard-working union members deserve honest representation, and leaders who exploit their positions for personal gain will be brought to justice.”

David Gelios, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Detroit Division said, “The betrayal of the trust of union members and the working public cannot be tolerated at any level. Mr. Hamilton’s embezzlement of union funds was a disservice to the labor union movement and the 18,000 hard-working members of Local 324 of the Operating Engineers Union.”

“Union leaders who misuse their positions to enrich themselves at the detriment of the hard-working men and women for whom they serve will be held accountable for their actions. The fact that Mr. Hamilton concealed his activities and used the very jobs he was elected to protect as leverage to obtain money makes this case even more egregious,” stated Jarod Koopman, Special Agent in Charge of the IRS- Criminal Investigation. “IRS- Criminal Investigation will continue to root out individuals who corrupt labor unions by working with its law enforcement partners.”

The case was investigated by agents of the Department of Labor, Office of Inspector General Office of Labor Racketeering and Fraud Investigations, the Office of Labor Management Standards, the Employee Benefits Security Administration, the Internal Revenue Service—Criminal Investigations, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys David A. Gardey and Dawn N. Ison.

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New York @Giants Super Fan, @LicensePlateGuy, Joe Ruback Arrested on Loan Sharking Charge

Joseph Ruback, the athletic director at Biondi School in Yonkers and former Spring Valley High School football coach, was arrested Thursday morning as part of an investigation into organized crime gambling rings and those who use violence to collect debts, authorities said.

Joseph Ruback, 46, a New City resident who has received acclaim as the "License Plate Guy" Giants fan, and Luigi Sessa, 63, of Suffern, face felony charges. Ruback, who has a previous conviction for stealing, faces fourth-degree grand larceny, while Sessa is charged with second-degree criminal usury and has a history of gambling-related charges.

Ruback, the athletic director at the Biondi School in Yonkers,  is charged with running his own loan-sharking operation, lending money and collecting at illegal interest rates, using violence and threats at times, authorities said.

Sessa has been connected to a large-scale gambling enterprise in Rockland and Westchester counties, New York City, Long Island, Pennsylvania and Florida, authorities said. His arrest was part of a 16-month undercover investigation into illegal loansharking and gambling linked to organized crime.

Eight other alleged players were arrested in June by the Rockland District Attorney's Office Organized Crime Unit through "Operation Rock Bottom," which focused on an Internet off-shore gambling website. Investigators seized illegal gambling records, computers and more than $750,000. The unit comprises district attorney's detectives, Clarkstown police, state police, and the FBI.

District Attorney Thomas Zugibe said Thursday that Ruback and Sessa separately "used threats, intimidation and even physical force to collect debts and charged usurious interest rates on outstanding debts." Ruback was being arraigned in Clarkstown Town Court. Sessa was scheduled to surrender Thursday, Zugibe said.

The June arrests and those made Thursday came on the heels of similar operations late last year that led to 21 people charged in connection with multimillion-dollar operations. In March, a Rockland investigation led to federal charges against a mob captain, Daniel Pagano of Ramapo, and Michael Palazzolo of Suffern. Pagano, the son of late mob kingpin Joseph Pagano, has pleaded guilty in the case and has been sentenced to federal prison.

Ruback has gained local notoriety as a New York Giants super fan, called the “License Plate Guy” for wearing Giants-themed placards to Big Blue games. Ruback, who claims to have not missed a game in 14 years, recently took part in a friendly wager on the Giants-Patriots game with the Rockland Jewish Community Center executive to provide Thanksgiving turkeys to People to People.

Ruback has experienced both sides of the law.

On Dec. 9, 1998, he pleaded guilty to fourth-degree grand larceny, a felony, and was sentenced Feb. 3 to five years probation and 6 months of community service. Ruback and a former Spring Valley High School quarterback, then 19, were charged with the theft of about $14,000 from the J.C. Penney at the Palisades Center mall.

In 1999, Ruback, while on probation, helped chase some suspects involved in an afternoon robbery at Marty's Sporting Center in Clarkstown. On March 27, 1997, he spotted someone breaking into his truck and gave chase. He tackled and held the suspect for police.

Ruback was hired as the Spring Valley High varsity football coach in May 1996, after coaching the school's junior varsity team for five years. He was then a physical education teacher at Hillcrest Elementary School. He led the Spring Valley team to a 10-1 record in 1997 and the state semifinals.

He had resigned two months before his 1998 arrest, stating he was about to get married and wanted to return to school to further his education.

Thanks to Steve Lieberman.

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