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2 sports gear firm execs charged in fraud scheme
Criminal Law Updates |
2011/05/14 18:27
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Two former executives of a sports equipment company were charged Wednesday with fraud for allegedly swindling dozens of schools in northern New Jersey by forging fake bids from competitors, inflating invoices and courting school officials with gifts.
Mitchell Kurlander of Allentown, Pa., and father-in-law Alan Abeshaus of Highland Beach, Fla., made initial appearances in federal court in Newark on Wednesday afternoon. They each face a conspiracy count, and Kurlander faces multiple mail- and wire-fraud counts, punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
Bail was set at $500,000 for Kurlander and $250,000 for Abeshaus, both secured by property.
The U.S. Attorney's Office said the two men used their company, Easton, Pa.- based Circle System Group, to defraud schools and youth sports programs over a 10-year period ending in 2007. The company, which was bought by Schutt Holdings in 2005, according to the indictment, primarily reconditioned football helmets and shoulder pads for resale.
According to the indictment, the scam worked in a number of ways. For instance, the company allegedly sent schools monthly statements that looked like invoices, leading many schools to pay the same invoice twice. Prosecutors allege the company reaped nearly $1 million in overpayments this way, and kept most of the money.
The company is alleged to have created fake price quotes from competitors that Circle would undercut in order to win contracts. The indictment also accuses it of inflating invoices, sometimes to reimburse the company for money it had donated to the schools' fundraising and charity efforts. |
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Ruling favors suspected Calif. gang members
Criminal Law Updates |
2011/05/11 13:04
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Authorities in California's Orange County violated the constitutional rights of dozens of suspected gang members when they enforced a gang injunction without giving them a chance to defend themselves in court, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.
U.S. District Court Judge Valerie Baker Fairbank's ruling favors those who challenged a temporary gang injunction issued in February 2009, notifying suspected members of the Orange Varrio Cypress gang that they will be barred from associating in public, wearing gang clothing or being out late at night within a roughly 4-square-mile area of Orange.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California sued, arguing that when some 60 people challenged their inclusion in the temporary injunction prosecutors removed their names. Those people were nonetheless named in the permanent injunction.
Fairbank ruled that the action violated those people's rights to defend against allegations that they have gang affiliations. She ordered police and prosecutors not to enforce the injunction against them. |
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Court to reconsider case of Super Bowl threat
Criminal Law Updates |
2011/05/10 10:09
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A federal appeals court will reconsider the case of an Arizona man accused of planning a massacre at the 2008 Super Bowl before changing his mind. Kurt Havelock was convicted in 2008 of mailing threatening messages, but a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the conviction last year. The panel's decision is now void, and the full 11-judge court will consider the conviction anew. Authorities alleged that Havelock bought an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and 200 rounds of ammunition, and wanted to kill people at the 2008 Super Bowl in Glendale. The documents say Havelock was armed when he reached a parking lot near University of Phoenix Stadium but had a change of heart. Havelock called his parents, who persuaded him to turn himself in. |
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Court for Fla. woman charged in husband's NY death
Criminal Law Updates |
2011/05/06 10:28
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Federal prosecutors have been turning up the heat on a Florida woman accused of arranging the 2009 killings of her millionaire husband and mother-in-law.
Narcy Novack of Fort Lauderdale and her brother, Cristobal Veliz of Brooklyn, N.Y., are due in court Friday morning for a status conference.
Novack and Veliz are accused of hiring others to kill Ben Novack in his New York hotel room and Bernice Novack in her Florida home.
Last month, the government added the mother-in-law's killing to the charges against Novack and Veliz. And a prosecutor said another charge — which carries the possibility of the death penalty — may be in store.
Defense attorneys suggested the prosecution was trying to force a guilty plea.
Ben Novack's father built the Fontainebleau hotel in Miami Beach, Fla. |
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NY man pleads guilty in 2005 samurai sword slaying
Criminal Law Updates |
2011/05/03 12:23
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A man about to start a second trial for the 2005 samurai sword slaying of his sleeping stepfather, whom he had accused of sexually molesting him, pleaded guilty Monday to manslaughter. Zachary Gibian, 24, will be sentenced later this month to 25 years in prison, the Suffolk County district attorney's office said. Gibian had been convicted of nearly beheading Scott Nager, a retired New York Police Department officer, as he slept on a couch at home in Hauppauge, on Long Island, but the state's highest court sided with an appeals court and ordered a new trial. It faulted the trial judge for not allowing testimony about statements made by Gibian's mother. Gibian, who gave written and videotaped confessions to police just hours after the February 2005 killing, changed his story on the witness stand. He insisted his mother inflicted the fatal blows on Nager, who had an extensive war memorabilia collection, after she discovered her husband sexually abusing him. Prosecutors said there was no evidence of any sexual abuse in the home. The mother, Laura Nager, maintained her innocence throughout the trial and wasn't charged. Gibian claimed that numerous times, beginning when he was about 15, Nager would get drunk and force him to perform a sex act on him — sometimes with a pistol against the boy's head. He testified that his mother learned of the abuse the night before the killing, when she walked in on her husband and son in the teen's bedroom. A key prosecution witness at the monthlong trial was Gibian's friend Troy "T.J." Harrelson, the son of former New York Mets star and manager Bud Harrelson. The younger Harrelson, who recalled few specific details because of his admitted use of marijuana, cocaine and painkillers, said he went to Gibian's home after his friend called him for a ride on the morning of the killing. Harrelson said when Gibian got in his car, he admitted he had just killed his stepfather and then asked Harrelson to help him dispose of the murder weapon and other items in a trash bin behind a shopping mall. |
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More psych evaluation in castration killing case
Criminal Law Updates |
2011/05/02 14:42
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A doctor will pay a second visit to a Portuguese model accused of castrating and killing a TV journalist in a Times Square hotel before his lawyer decides whether to pursue a psychiatric defense in the attack.
A psychiatrist visited Renato Seabra this month but needs a second evaluation of the 21-year-old model, defense attorney David Touger said Friday. Seabra was transferred two weeks ago from Bellevue Hospital to jail at Rikers Island, Touger said.
"He is medicated because he has a psychiatric illness. He is doing well under the circumstances that he is under," Touger said after a short pretrial hearing in state Supreme Court in Manhattan.
Seabra, a former contestant on a Portuguese talent-search show, has pleaded not guilty to murder in Carlos Castro's Jan. 7 death. Castro, a 65-year-old Portuguese TV personality and writer, was found dead, naked and bloodied in a room they were sharing. |
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