Free Republic

Voted at 9:45 am-Longest lines I've ever seen at this polling place (probably because I normally vote at 6-7am) Election district has large population of Hispanics but something new I've noticed this time-I'm seeing a large amount of Eastern European and Irish voters-all no doubt new citizens to this area. Eastern Euros are mostly Russian and Polish. I would guess about a quarter of voters are older white voters (mostly home-owners who for whatever reason have decided to stay here-and who, for the record seem to be largely Romney voters)

WASHINGTON—James M. Woosley, 48, the former Acting Director of Intelligence for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), was sentenced today to 20 months in prison for defrauding the government of more than $180,000 in a scheme involving fraudulent travel vouchers and time and attendance claims. The sentence was announced by U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen, Jr.; Charles K. Edwards, Acting Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security; James W. McJunkin, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office; and Timothy Moynihan, Assistant Director of the ICE Office of Professional Responsibility. Woosley,...

WASHINGTON—Lateisha M. Rollerson, 38, a former assistant to an acting intelligence chief for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), was sentenced today to 10 months in prison for taking part in a fraud scheme involving more than $500,000 in government money. The sentence was announced by U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen, Jr., Charles K. Edwards, Acting Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security; James W. McJunkin, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office; and Timothy Moynihan, Assistant Director of the ICE Office of Professional Responsibility. Rollerson, of Bowie, Maryland, pled...

WASHINGTON—Kwame R. Brown, the former Chairman of the Council of the District of Columbia, pled guilty today to a federal charge of bank fraud and a second criminal charge involving a violation of the District of Columbia’s campaign finance laws. The guilty pleas were announced by U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr.; Ronald T. Hosko, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Washington Field Office’s Criminal Division; and Rick A. Raven, Special Agent in Charge of the Washington Field Office of the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI). Brown, 41, pled guilty to the bank fraud charge in the U.S. District...

BOSTON—A Chinese national in Massachusetts on business was arrested for illegally supplying U.S. origin parts to end-users in China in violation of U.S. export laws. Qiang Hu, a/k/a Johnson Hu, 47, was charged in a complaint with conspiracy to violate the Export Administration Regulations and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The complaint, originally filed on May 18, was unsealed after Hu’s arrest at his hotel in North Andover yesterday. The complaint alleges that Hu has been the sales manager at MKS Instruments Shanghai Ltd. (MKS-Shanghai) since 2008. MKS-Shanghai is the Shanghai sales office of MKS Instruments Inc. (MKS), which...

WASHINGTON—The Department of Justice announced that North Carolina Department of Correction’s Division of Community Corrections Probation Officer Willie James Steele, Jr., 47, was indicted yesterday on civil rights charges for violating the constitutional rights of a female probationer that he was supervising by coercing her into sexual acts on two separate occasions. Steele was indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts of deprivation of rights under color of law and one count of using and carrying a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence. According to the indictment filed in the Western District of North...

ALBUQUERQUE—This morning, Jaime Jesus Sanchez-Ramos, 22, a Mexican national, was arraigned on a federal indictment charging him with four counts of bank robbery. Sanchez-Ramos entered a not guilty plea to the indictment. Sanchez-Ramos has been in federal custody since his arrest on April 10, 2012 and remains detained pending trial. The indictment charges Sanchez-Ramos with robbing the following four banks in Santa Fe, New Mexico, earlier this year: (1) the Century Bank located at 1790 Saint Michael’s Drive on January 26, 2012; (2) the New Mexico Bank and Trust located at 1549 Paseo de Peralta on February 15, 2012; (3)...

WASHINGTON—Danita C. Doleman, 46, the president of a non-profit organization, pled guilty today to a charge of filing a false tax return stemming from her participation in a scheme involving former District of Columbia Council member Harry L. Thomas, Jr. The guilty plea was announced by U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen, Jr.; James W. McJunkin, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI Washington Field Office; and Eric Hylton, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the Washington Field Office of the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI). Doleman, of Washington, D.C., pled guilty in the U.S. District Court for the District of...

JACKSONVILLE, FL—United States Attorney Robert E. O’Neill announces today that Steven Beumel (48, Jacksonville) pleaded guilty to one count of tampering with a consumer product resulting in death, four counts of tampering with a consumer product resulting in serious bodily injury, and five counts of stealing Fentanyl by deception. Beumel faces a maximum penalty of life in federal prison. He was arrested by FBI agents on May 24, 2011 and has remained in custody since his arrest. A sentencing date has not been yet scheduled. According to court documents, Beumel was a radiology technician at Memorial Hospital from May 1992...

The former police chief for the village of Alorton and the city of East St. Louis was sentenced in United States District Court on April 27, 2012 for stealing evidence and making false statements to federal investigators, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois, Stephen R. Wigginton, announced today. Michael Baxton, Sr., 49, was sentenced to federal prison for one year; was ordered to pay a $200 special assessment and a $2,000 fine; and was ordered to serve a two-year term of supervised release following completion of his prison sentence. Baxton, Sr. pled guilty to the charges...

TROY, Mo. (KMOV) -- An illegal immigrant from Guatemala has been charged in the rape of a 14-year-old girl in Troy, Missouri. The alleged victim says 24-year-old Juan Domingo Francisco-Esteban was involved in the attack last month inside her home. She told police that Francisco-Esteban and two other Hispanic men held her down by the shoulders while raping her on a couch.

A 22-year-old man is being charged in the savage killing of a mom and daughter in Las Vegas after a week-long man hunt. Bryan Clay is alleged to have bludgeoned to death 10-year-old Karla Martinez and her mother, Ignacia Martinez at their Robin Street home last Saturday, in an apparent random crime. Karla’s father, Arturo Martinez, 39, was critically injured in the bludgeoning attack and remains in hospital with head injuries. Savage: Brian Clay allegedly bludgeoned to death the mother and daughter at their Las Vegas home Savage: Brian Clay allegedly bludgeoned to death the mother and daughter at their...

A Seattle area pastor who defrauded two dozen victims, some of them his own parishioners, out of more than $1.8 million was sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Seattle to 40 months in prison, three years of supervised release, and $1,843,932 in restitution for wire fraud and money laundering, announced U.S. Attorney Jenny A. Durkan. Anthony C. Morris, 48, the pastor of New Covenant Christian Center, pleaded guilty in January 2012, admitting that his fraud was a Ponzi scheme where early investors were paid off from the money taken from later investors. At sentencing U.S. District Judge Richard A....

TAMPA—United States Attorney Robert E. O’Neill announces that United States District Judge Richard A. Lazzara sentenced James Cafferty (45, Largo) to seven years in federal prison, followed by a lifetime term of supervised release, for transporting child pornography. Cafferty pled guilty on January 5, 2012. According to the plea agreement, FBI agents investigated Cafferty, a former special agent with the Department of State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, for his involvement in the possession and transfer of child pornography. On August 29, 2011, agents executed a search warrant at his residence in Largo and seized computer equipment. The equipment contained more...

GREENBELT, MD—United States District Judge Peter J. Messitte sentenced former Director of Prince George’s County Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) James Edward Johnson, age 67, of Temple Hills, Maryland, today to 37 months in prison, followed by two years of supervised release, for conspiracy to commit extortion. Judge Messitte also entered an order requiring James Johnson to pay a fine of $25,000 and to forfeit $46,300 that was seized from his safe deposit box. The sentence was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein; Special Agent in Charge Richard A. McFeely of...

NEWARK, NJ—Former Secaucus, New Jersey Mayor Dennis Elwell was sentenced today to 30 months in prison for accepting a $10,000 cash bribe in exchange for agreeing to provide assistance in securing town approvals for purported real estate projects in Secaucus, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced. A jury found Elwell, 66, of Secaucus, guilty following a two-week trial in July 2011. Elwell was convicted of one count of bribery and acquitted on one count of conspiracy and one count of attempted extortion under color of official right. U.S. District Judge Jose L. Linares presided over the trial and imposed the...

Wifredo A. Ferrer, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida; and Dena E. Choucair, Acting Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), Miami Field Office, announce that eight individuals have been charged in two separate complaints involving public corruption allegations. The first complaint, 12-2494-Garber, charges the lead code compliance inspector for the city of Miami Beach (Jose L. Alberto), four Miami Beach code compliance officers (Willie E. Grant, Orlando E. Gonzalez, Ramon D. Vasallo, Vicente L. Santiesteban), and two Miami Beach firefighters (Henry L. Bryant and Chai D. Footman) for their participation in a scheme to...

An 85-year-old woman was sexually assaulted and battered to death by a home invader who also shot her 90-year-old husband in the face with a BB gun. Nancy and Bob Strait, who had celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary in December, were discovered by their daughter at their home in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Both the pensioners were rushed to hospital where Mrs Strait, who was nearly blind, died from her injuries. Mr Strait, who served in the 101st Airborne Division in World War II, suffered a broken jaw, broken ribs and severe bleeding. He is in a serious condition in hospital.

CARY -- Seated in his wheelchair, Nolan Turner, 12, staked out his neighborhood Thursday evening to sell water bottles and raise money to bring his wheelchair basketball team to his elementary school. “Everybody at school has been asking me what it’s like to (play basketball) in a wheelchair, and I want to show them,” the Briarcliff Elementary fifth-grader said. He had already collected more than $250 – kept in a bucket – of the $1,000 needed to bring the experience of playing wheelchair basketball to his schoolmates. But as he began to work the neighborhood near High Meadow Drive about...

SAN FRANCISCO—Tze Chao pleaded guilty in federal court in San Francisco late yesterday afternoon to conspiracy to commit economic espionage, United States Attorney Melinda Haag announced. In pleading guilty, Chao, who was employed by DuPont from 1966 to 2002, admitted that he provided trade secrets concerning DuPont’s proprietary titanium dioxide (TiO2) manufacturing process to companies he knew were controlled by the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Chao admitted that beginning in 2003, the year after he left DuPont, he began consulting for the Pangang Group, a PRC government-controlled company that produces TiO2. According to his plea agreement,...