Law and Order

A Dayton, Ohio man was sentenced today in U.S. District Court to 180 months in prison and 25 years of supervised release for attempting, and conspiring, to join the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). “Alebbini was determined to travel overseas for the purpose of joining ISIS and engaging in violence in support of the foreign terrorist organization,” said ...

DALLAS — An indictment against an accused darknet drug dealer, unsealed Friday, charges him with leveraging bitcoin’s apparent anonymity to sell fentanyl online. This indictment was announced by U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Erin Nealy Cox. This case was investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), IRS’s Criminal Investigation Division’s Los Angeles ...

DENVER — Forty-two people were arrested this week in one of the largest black-market marijuana enforcement actions in Colorado history. This law enforcement action identified marijuana grows in homes across the Metro Denver area. Eight businesses were also searched. More than 80,000 marijuana plants and 4,500 pounds of finished marijuana product were seized from the locations searched. The following are ...

The former president and CEO of MRI International Inc. (MRI), a purported investment company and medical collections business located in Las Vegas, Nevada, and Tokyo, Japan, was sentenced to 50 years in prison today for his role in a $1.5 billion Ponzi scheme. Edwin Fujinaga, 72, of Las Vegas, was sentenced by Chief Judge Gloria Navarro of the U.S. District ...

A federal grand jury indicted a San Fernando Valley man for his role in planning to bomb a rally in Long Beach last month for the purpose of causing mass casualties. Mark Steven Domingo, 26, of Reseda, California, a former U.S. Army infantryman who was deployed to Afghanistan, was previously arrested on a criminal complaint in this case.  The indictment ...

WASHINGTON – On May 2, 2019, Attorney General William P. Barr approved the creation of the State and Local Law Enforcement Coordination Section (SLEC-S) within the Office of Legislative Affairs. As of June 3, 2019, the SLEC-S will be responsible for ensuring that Department leadership is properly informed of state and local law enforcement’s top priorities, while working to ensure ...

OFAC Sanctions a Magistrate Judge and Former Governor, Among Others Washington – Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated a Mexican magistrate judge and a former Mexican governor due to their involvement in corruption activities.  OFAC designated Mexican magistrate judge Isidro Avelar Gutierrez pursuant to the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (Kingpin Act) ...

A complex transnational organized cybercrime network that used GozNym malware in an attempt to steal an estimated $100 million from unsuspecting victims in the United States and around the world has been dismantled as part of an international law enforcement operation.  GozNym infected tens of thousands of victim computers worldwide, primarily in the United States and Europe.  The operation was ...

TULSA, Okla. — Twenty-nine members and co-conspirators of a drug trafficking organization with ties to Mexico’s New Generation Cartel have been indicted for their alleged roles in a continuing criminal enterprise, conspiring to possess and distribute heroin, money laundering and other related charges. These criminal charges were announced Tuesday by the following agency heads:  U.S. Attorney Trent Shores, Northern District ...

U.S. District Court Judge Robin L. Rosenberg has ruled that a Florida-based company, RM Broadcasting LLC (RM Broadcasting), was acting as an agent of a foreign principal and must register as such under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA). The Department of Justice contended in a civil counterclaim that RM Broadcasting has been acting as an agent of ...

An indictment was unsealed today charging a former intelligence analyst with illegally obtaining classified national defense information and disclosing it to a reporter. Daniel Everette Hale, 31, of Nashville, Tennessee, was arrested this morning and will make his initial appearance today at the federal courthouse in Nashville. According to the indictment, Hale was enlisted in the U.S. Air Force from ...

A former U.S. Army civilian employee pleaded guilty today to conspiring to accept bribes and disclose sensitive U.S. Army procurement information while serving as a range operations manager at Hawaii’s Schofield Barracks. Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Kenji M. Price of the District of Hawaii, Special Agent in Charge Ray Park ...

Candace Marie Claiborne, a former employee of the U.S. Department of State, pleaded guilty today to a charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States, by lying to law enforcement and background investigators, and hiding her extensive contacts with, and gifts from, agents of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), in exchange for providing them with internal documents from the ...

An indictment unsealed today charges Xiaoqing Zheng, 56, of Niskayuna, New York, and Zhaoxi Zhang, 47, of Liaoning Province, China, with economic espionage and conspiring to steal General Electric’s (GE’s) trade secrets surrounding turbine technologies, knowing and intending that those stolen trade secrets would be used to benefit the People’s Republic of China.  Assistant Attorney General for National Security John ...

A Wisconsin woman pleaded guilty today to attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a designated foreign terrorist organization.  Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers, U.S. Attorney Matthew D. Krueger of the Eastern District of Wisconsin and Acting Special Agent in Charge Michelle Sutphin of the FBI’s Milwaukee Field Office ...