Day: July 10, 2024

An 18-month criminal investigation concluded in Brooklyn Wednesday morning after an inter-agency task force cuffed two postal workers and three of their cohorts for illegally cashing millions of dollars worth of checks, NYPD officials said.

amNewYork Metro learned on July 10 that cops began busting a slew of individuals in the Flatbush area of the borough during the early hours Wednesday, including one man with a firearm. The five alleged scam artists were put in cuffs and taken in unmarked police vans to the NYPD 84th Precinct.

Those taken into custody include Jamaica residents Kevaugh Wellington, 31, and Angel Ortiz, 27; Bronx resident Fuquan Bradley, 34; Brooklyn resident Mark Dawson, 28; and Orange, NJ resident Ky-Mani Straker, 24.

amNewYork Metro spotted NYPD Assistant Chief of Detectives Janson Savino leaving the stationhouse before quizzing him on the arrests.

The group was taken away in cuffs to 84th Precinct where all five alleged scam artists were piled into unmarked police vans. Photo by Dean Moses The group was taken away in cuffs to 84th Precinct where all five alleged scam artists were piled into unmarked police vans.Photo by Dean Moses

The investigation began after Capital One Bank alerted authorities that large checks were being deposited into accounts that did not match the payee and into a small number of accounts.

“In 2022, we became privy, via Capital One, that individuals were ultimately cashing in an inordinate amount of money via international Treasury checks,” Savino explained. “A million dollars of these checks were cashed in only approximately 150 accounts. So, start doing the math.”

With none of the names on the checks matching the accounts they were being deposited into, Savino stated that the NYPD created a task force that not only consisted of the New York Police Department but also the Secret Service, the Treasury Inspector General, postal police, and the financial crimes unit.

Following thousands of hours of probing, the task force tracked the suspects to the JFK post office. Calling the post office “a point of compromise,” Chief Savino stated that it was discovered that all the stolen checks went through those employees.

amNewYork Metro spotted NYPD Assistant Chief of Detectives Janson Savino leaving the stationhouse before quizzing him on the arrests, during which he unveiled the scope of the case. Photo by Dean Moses The group were whisked away in cuffs to 84th Precinct where all five alleged scam artists were piled into unmarked police vans. Photo by Dean Moses

“These individuals would steal these checks, and then sell them. They would sell them using a telegram app, or some sort of application, and they would sell them for really a modest fee of sorts — $500, $600. But make, if you’re selling literally hundreds of these, you’re making a significant profit with that,” Savino said.  “There were individuals we would call runners. Those runners would then take those checks and do one or two things: they would either resell them, or they would deposit them.”

Savino said that the con artists would also deposit the checks at one ATM branch and then quickly, before the bank could determine fraud, withdraw the funds from another location. The assistant chief said that the funds stolen ranged over $4 million, but after pouring over the ledgers and other materials, they could mount to a staggering $40 million.

Savino also pointed out that the crime is not just about money but also about the victims involved, with the assistant chief saying that people are left financially burdened when relief and Social Security checks do not arrive. He also noted that the perpetrators involved also have a history of violence and when cuffed one was even found with a firearm.

“When you look at these five individuals, three of them have been shot historically. They’ve taken a gun arrest within the last year and, even in today’s takedown, one of the subjects opened up his door, and when he was subsequently apprehended, there was a loaded firearm within his reachable area, literally within feet that was ultimately recovered by our teams,” Savino said.

The group were whisked away in cuffs to 84th Precinct where all five alleged scam artists were piled into unmarked police vans.Photo by Dean Moses The group were whisked away in cuffs to 84th Precinct where all five alleged scam artists were piled into unmarked police vans. Photo by Dean Moses

The much-proclaimed but seldom realised belief that “no one is above the law” clearly requires help. If the supremely stupid Supreme Court has shown us anything it has shown us that no ideal of government, no law, no Constitutional amendment is safe from the people who run the government. After all, what good is any law if persons in power and of bad faith are prepared to pervert or even break it? Does there exist any legal structure so compelling that it can prevent bad and powerful people from finding language, however absurd or dishonesty contrived, from rationalising its subversion? I used to think so. I no longer do.

Constitutional scholar and Harvard professor emeritus Lawrence Tribe believes he has an answer to the problem we face today from the MAGA Supreme Court. His solution is threefold. I’ll quote the first one here: “[F]irst, there is a compelling need for supreme court reform, including a plan to impose an enforceable ethics code and term limits and possibly create several added seats to offset the way Trump as president stacked the court to favor his Maga agenda.”

Notice that Mr Tribe includes, in his commendable attempt to repair the current Supreme Court, the words, “… possibly create several added seats …”. I submit this most weakly delineated recommendation of his first solution is in fact the strongest, and it is ultimately the only solution. All other solutions are just words on paper, and if Donald Trump in specific and Trumpism in general have taught us anything, they have taught us that laws mean nothing if they lack people of goodwill in government prepared to uphold them.

There exists no law or Constitutional proclamation that I know of so powerfully and unequivocally enshrined in words that a determined villain can’t twist beyond recognition and mould to a corrupt purpose. No amount of instruction or threat can compel the current court to do the right thing. We have already seen (twice!) that MAGA members of Congress were unwilling to impeach and convict Donald Trump of obvious crimes against the presidency. I put it to Mr Tribe with sincerely held respect: what makes you think that any law or any Constitutional amendment or any independent ethics committee could hold the current SCOTUS to any standard, if that law is ignored or that committee is composed of a majority of MAGA Republicans? We are treading on air.

The only realistic solution we have today is to get MAGA entirely out of government, or at least to lock away what few remain in a harmless minority. Beginning with SCOTUS, we must expand the court to at least 13 members. We must begin as soon as President Biden has won a second term. An expanded SCOTUS could immediately set about undoing the incredible harm this current crop of thugs has inflicted on the foundations of democracy. It could reinstate and strengthen Roe, repeal the doctrine of “official” presidential immunity, and hold corporations accountable to standards in the public’s best interest. An expanded SCOTUS could solve a lot of problems.

Next, we need to get a MAGA majority out of Congress and keep it out. I know that sounds a lot like a recipe for dragon stew: first you need to find a dragon. But I don’t make reality, I just occupy my little corner of it. Obviously we must vote. But we also must fight. We the people are the same “We the people” of the preamble to the Constitution, and if we don’t fight like hell then this 248 year old experiment in enlightened self-government might not make it to 249. In the end it’s all up to us. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.

The post How to really fix the Supreme Court appeared first on Palmer Report.

(New York Jewish Week) — Three members of the extremist Jewish Lev Tahor religious cult were sentenced to more than 10 years in prison by a New York court on Tuesday.

Brothers Yoil Weingarten, Yakov Weingarten and Shmiel Weingarten were convicted in March of child exploitation and kidnapping for their role in abducting a 14-year-old girl and her 12-year-old brother from the Catskills home of their mother in 2018.

Shmiel Weingarten was sentenced to 14 years in prison, and Yakov and Yoil were both sentenced to 12 years, the U.S. Southern District Court told the New York Jewish Week.

The brothers were the last of nine suspects in the case to stand trial, all of whom have been convicted or pleaded guilty. They include Lev Tahor’s leader, Nachman Helbrans, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2022 for kidnapping and transporting minors for sexual purposes and other charges.

The Weingartens and the other defendants were all leaders of Lev Tahor, which means “pure heart” in Hebrew. They were known within the group as the “Hanhala,” or management, prosecutors said. The men governed all aspects of life in the community, including marriage and sex between underage girls and adult men.

Lev Tahor is a secretive group and little is known about its inner workings. The group adheres to an extreme interpretation of Jewish law that largely shields its members from the outside world and places tight strictures on aspects of everyday life, such as their diet and dress. A group called Lev Tahor Survivors, which opposes the cult’s activities, has estimated the cult’s membership at several hundred people and says it is led by a core cohort, with the rest being held mostly against their will.

The kidnapping case threw the group into turmoil, and since Helbrans’ arrest some members have sought a new home, turning up in the Balkans and Morocco. But the majority appears to have remained in Guatemala, where the group has been based since around 2013, following stints in Israel and Canada during which they attempted to flee government oversight.

The Weingarten brothers were convicted after being extradited to the United States from Guatemala in 2022. They were held in the Westchester County Jail and tried in the U.S. Southern District Court in White Plains. They were convicted of all charges, including international parental kidnapping, coercion or enticement of a minor female, and conspiracy to defraud the United States.

In a letter to Judge Nelson Román last week, U.S. District Attorney Damian Williams asked the judge for a sentence “meaningfully greater than twelve years” against each of the brothers because, unlike other defendants in the case, they had committed obstruction of justice during the legal proceedings by providing false information to the court and tampering with witnesses. Yakov and Shmiel also committed perjury, Williams said.

“The defendants’ criminal conduct is deeply troubling and merits a substantial sentence,” his letter said. It added later, “The Court should therefore send a strong message that kidnapping children carries serious consequences.”

In the kidnapping case, in December 2018 members of the cult abducted a brother and sister who were staying in the town of Woodridge, New York with their mother, who had fled Lev Tahor. The kidnappers took the children from the home late at night and, using disguises and fraudulent identification documents, smuggled the siblings across state lines into Mexico to reunite the girl with the adult man they considered her “husband.”

Lev Tahor had a practice of wedding underage girls to adult men and forcing them to have sex with their “husbands,” U.S. investigators have said. The girl in this case was 13 when she was “married” to Jacob Rosner, then 18, another defendant in the case. The illegal marriage, which was never officially recognized, prompted the children’s mother to flee the cult.

The children were recovered in Mexico after a weeks-long search involving hundreds of investigators and law enforcement personnel, and returned to New York.

According to prosecutors, the three brothers and the other defendants planned the kidnapping, instructed others who were involved and played a central role in carrying out the abduction. Shmiel Weingarten bought disguises for the children at a Walmart ahead of the kidnapping and was in the car that took the children from the home where they were staying to an airport in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The children flew from there to Mexico, where they met with Yoil Weingarten and other members of the cult.

When law enforcement located the children in Mexico, they were with Yoil and Shmiel. After the children were returned to New York and reunited with their mother, Yakov Weingarten tried to kidnap the girl a second time and threatened her mother.

The defendants in the case claimed the mother had wrongfully removed the children from the community and that they were attempting a rescue.

The mother is the sister of Nachman Helbrans, the cult leader, who took the reins of the group after his father, Lev Tahor founder Shlomo Helbrans, drowned in a river in Mexico in 2017. She pleaded with the judge to show Nachman mercy at his sentencing in 2022.

The post Last 3 defendants in Lev Tahor cult abduction case sentenced to more than 10 years in prison appeared first on The Forward.

US appears to be taking over #Russia in calling meetings between #Armenia and #Azerbaijan officials, urging a peace treaty to be signed between the two. https://t.co/zT3C0WcA2n

— Nagorno Karabakh Observer (@NKobserver) July 10, 2024

Another high-level US official to visit #Armenia. These past two months have seen an unprecedented number of high-level US officials visit the country as the current government reorients itself (foreign and internal policies) towards the West and becomes overtly anti-Russian. https://t.co/cvGrGeIATH

— Nagorno Karabakh Observer (@NKobserver) July 10, 2024

While continuing to be vague about whether what happened in Artsakh was ethnic cleansing, USAID Administrator Samantha Power said that the U.S. is calling on Azerbaijan to ensure the rights for safe return of Artsakh Armenians.

Speaking at a press conference in Yerevan on Wednesday, Power said that events in Nagorno-Karabakh are being “examined” by the State Department, noting “with regret” that should could not give an assessment on the matter before the State Department does.

“We are aware of the latest reports that have recently been released, where there is documented data and interviews with numerous families who survived the events of recent years and specifically September 2023,” she added, referring to Azerbaijan’s attack on Artsakh that led to the forced exodus of more than 100,000 Armenians from their ancestral homes.

She called for ensuring the rights of Artsakh residents and the families to return safely to their homes.

Power explained that there must be proper conditions for return, fundamental among which is a change in circumstances.

“I was at the border in September 2023, and I still remember the stories of the families from Nagorno-Karabakh who fled to Armenia and the fear they endured. They were unable to get food and medicine for months before Azerbaijan took these communities. The persons I met had lost contact with their families during the hasty exodus [from Artsakh],” Power explained.

Power said she was satisfied that many of these families were able to reunite, but not in all cases. She recalled that on Tuesday she visited a place run by a businessman from Nagorno-Karabakh who fled to Armenia several years ago.
“He employs people who have recently come to Armenia. The spouse of one of the female employees is missing, the spouse of another was killed in the fighting. This reflects what many families have experienced,” Power explained.

“The data for June shows that employment rates have increased, but the suffering of this group of population continues to be extremely great, as they have left a lot there. We support this population, and we support kindergartens and schools that have hosted children who have experienced serious traumas,” Power said, voicing confidence in the Armenian government’s effort to ensure the welfare of the forcibly displaced Artsakh Armenians. https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?height=314&href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FUSAIDArmenia%2Fvideos%2F1774511816287810%2F&show_text=false&width=560&t=0

Power emphasized that peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan would go a long way in alleviating some of these challenges.

“The U.S. Agency for International Development and the United States stand ready to help Armenia strengthen democracy and achieve peace with Azerbaijan. I am here today because Armenia has an opportunity to prosper, strengthen its democracy, and achieve the peace that people have dreamed of for so long. The United States stands ready to help Armenia make the most of this window of opportunity,” Power said.

She pointed out that trade turnover between Armenia and the United States has tripled since 2020.

“If in 2020 the figure was $96 million, in 2023 it was $321 million. This pace can accelerate. We are moving from support for Armenia to trade with Armenia. We have helped the Armenian government improve investment opportunities in imports and experts in agriculture, tourism, and technology. In addition, we are working to encourage local food production, including the cultivation of crops suitable for Armenia’s climate,” Power explained.

The post Power Calls for Ensuring Rights of Artsakh Armenians to Return appeared first on Asbarez.com.

YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am)—Law-enforcement authorities have reportedly a launched a criminal investigation into financial irregularities allegedly committed by Armenia’s ruling Civil Contract party.

The investigation stems from mandatory audits of Civil Contract’s 2022 and 2023 financial reports that were conducted by a private firm, Trust Audit. The audits concluded that the party led by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan exceeded a legal limit on donations and failed to return the surplus funding to donors or contribute it to the state in another breach of Armenian law.

They found that the party also violated the law by accepting money from anonymous donors as well as businesses and other entities. Those donations too should be handed back or transferred to the state treasury. Civil Contract did not do that either, according to Trust Audit.

The state Commission on the Prevention of Corruption looked into the findings of the 2022 audit before asking the Office of the Prosecutor-General to launch criminal proceedings. A commission spokesperson told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Wednesday that the prosecutors have instructed another law-enforcement agency, the Anti-Corruption Committee, to open a criminal case.

The commission is also examining the results of the 2023 audit. It will decide later this year whether to recommend a criminal inquiry into them as well.

Vahagn Aleksanyan, Civil Contract’s deputy chairman, downplayed these irregularities last month, saying that they are mere “technical” errors that can be corrected “very quickly.”
Earlier this year, two Armenian media outlets reported that ahead of local elections held in 2023 and 2022 Pashinyan’s party received lavish and dubious campaign donations on behalf of scores of mostly low-income individuals unaware of them.

The party claimed to have raised 506.5 million drams ($1.3 million) in the run-up to last September’s municipal elections in Yerevan. The investigative publication Infocom.am revealed in January that the bulk of that sum was generated by donations ranging from 1 million to 2.5 million drams, the maximum amount of a campaign contribution allowed by the law. Their nominal contributors included presumably non-rich people, linked to senior government officials and businesspeople, as well as ordinary residents of Yerevan who could hardly afford such payments.

For its part, CivilNet reported in March that ahead of local elections held in other parts of Armenia in 2022, Civil Contract received 170 million drams ($435,000) from 140 persons, the vast majority of them its own election candidates. The media outlet randomly interviewed 31 such individuals and found that 15 of them categorically deny making any campaign donations.

“Others avoided answering or said they do not remember, and some said they are too busy to answer the question,” it said.

Critics suggested that Civil Contract arranged these shady payments to circumvent the cap on political donations. Pashinyan flatly denied this. He claimed that the payments made on behalf of third persons unaware of them resulted from human or organizational “errors.”

The post Criminal Probe Launched Into Finances of Pashinyan Ruling Party appeared first on Asbarez.com.

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