Anonymous ID: 285018 Sept. 24, 2024, 9:55 p.m. No.21653085   🗄️.is đź”—kun   >>3110 >>3187

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-12-05/michael-avenatti-sentenced-prison-california

Michael Avenatti gets 14 years in prison for stealing millions of dollars from clients

Michael Avenatti, the once-swaggering celebrity lawyer who was undone by his proclivity for embezzlement and fraud, was sentenced Monday to 14 years in prison for dodging taxes and stealing millions of dollars from clients.

His sentencing by U.S. District Judge James V. Selna in Santa Ana concludes the last of three federal prosecutions of the former attorney, who gained notoriety for representing adult film star Stormy Daniels in her court battles against former President Trump.

Avenatti accomplished “good things in his life,” but has “also done great evil,” Selna said as he handed down the sentence. He ordered Avenatti to pay $7.6 million in restitution to victims and $3.2 million to the government.

Avenatti, 51, is already serving five years in prison for extortion and fraud convictions at two trials in New York. Selna said he must start serving the 14-year sentence after he completes the current stint behind bars, so the penalty for Avenatti’s full array of crimes is 19 years in prison.

In the Santa Ana case, Avenatti pleaded guilty in June to four counts of wire fraud for stealing money from clients and one count of obstructing collection of payroll taxes from his Seattle coffee business, now defunct.

One of the law clients he robbed, Geoffrey Ernest Johnson, was a mentally ill paraplegic on disability.

“To this day, I do not know why Michael lied and deceived me, why he broke my trust, why he broke my heart,” Johnson wrote in a statement to the court.

Johnson won a $4-million settlement of a suit against Los Angeles County. The money was wired in January 2015 to Avenatti, who kept the bulk of it and lied to Johnson about it. From his wheelchair at the sentencing, Johnson told Selna that Avenatti “really broke me.”

“Next to the incident that caused me to become paralyzed, meeting Michael and having him steal my money is the worst thing that has happened to me,” he said.

Avenatti also admitted stealing from a $2.75-million settlement that his client Alexis Gardner obtained from her former boyfriend Hassan Whiteside, a pro basketball player then with the Miami Heat. Avenatti, who during his crime spree drove a Ferrari, used most of that money to buy a private jet. Selna has approved the government’s request to confiscate the eight-seat Honda HA-420 plane.

Gardner told Selna that Avenatti was a “psychotic con man” who thought nothing of “stepping on all of the small people.” He left her fearful, she said, of anyone who shows kindness. “I don’t know if it’s real,” she said.

Avenatti, who has been incarcerated most recently at the low-security Terminal Island federal prison in San Pedro, represented himself in court despite the suspension of his law license. He asked Selna to impose no more than six years in prison that would run concurrently with the five he is already serving.

“Your honor, I am deeply sorry and remorseful for my criminal conduct,” Avenatti, dressed in sneakers and a beige prison uniform, told the judge. His conduct, he added, “has brought shame upon my family, my friends and my profession.”

At the same time, he said: “At no point in time did I set out to bilk my clients.” He added later: “I am not an evil or vile man.”

Anonymous ID: 285018 Sept. 24, 2024, 10:07 p.m. No.21653128   🗄️.is đź”—kun

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/corpses-sombreros-mexico-cartel-violence-sinaloa-leaders-arrested-us/

Bodies have appeared across the city, often left slung out on the streets or in cars with either sombreros on their heads or pizza slices or boxes pegged onto them with knives. The pizzas and sombreros have become informal symbols for the warring cartel factions, underscoring the brutality of their warfare.

Anonymous ID: 285018 Sept. 24, 2024, 10:51 p.m. No.21653271   🗄️.is đź”—kun   >>3277 >>3511

https://apnews.com/article/trump-assassination-attempt-son-child-sexual-abuse-material-b4d59cdc786211b94ad6e795f714d1e7

FBI: Son of suspect in Trump assassination attempt arrested on child sexual abuse images charges

The son of the man suspected in the assassination attempt in Florida against former President Donald Trump has been arrested on federal charges of possessing child sexual abuse images.

Oran Alexander Routh was arrested this week after authorities searched his Greensboro, North Carolina, home “in connection with an investigation unrelated to child exploitation,” and found hundreds of files depicting child sexual abuse, an FBI agent said in court papers.

Investigators who seized multiple electronic devices found videos sent to Oran Routh in July as well as chats from a messaging application commonly used by people who share child sexual abuse material, the FBI agent said.

He faces two charges of possessing and receiving child sexual abuse material and is expected to appear later Tuesday in federal court in North Carolina.

There was no attorney listed for Oran Routh in court papers. Phone messages left for relatives of Oran Routh were not immediately returned.

Oran Routh’s father, Ryan Wesley Routh, has been charged with federal gun offenses in connection to the attempted assassination at Trump’s Florida golf course earlier this month. Prosecutors have indicated much more serious attempted assassination charges are coming.

Oran Routh’s arrest was first reported Tuesday by ABC News.

A federal judge on Monday agreed with Justice Department prosecutors that Ryan Routh should remain locked up while he awaits trial in his case.

Prosecutors have said Ryan Routh left behind a note detailing his plans to kill the former president and kept in his car a handwritten list of dates and venues where Trump was to appear. The note describing Routh’s plans was placed in a box that he dropped off months earlier at the home of an unidentified person who did not open it until after Ryan Routh’s arrest, prosecutors said.

Ryan Routh is currently charged with illegally possessing his gun in spite of multiple felony convictions, including two charges of possessing stolen goods in 2002 in North Carolina, and with possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number.

But a prosecutor said in court Monday that they would pursue additional charges before a grand jury, accusing him of having tried to “assassinate a major political candidate” — charges that would warrant life in prison in the event of a conviction.

It is common for prosecutors to file more easily provable charges as an immediate placeholder before adding more significant allegations as the case proceeds.

Ryan Routh was arrested Sept. 15 after a Secret Service agent who was scoping the Trump International Golf Club for potential security threats saw a partially obscured man’s face and the barrel of a semiautomatic rifle, aimed directly at the former president.

The agent fired at Routh, who sped away before being stopped by officials in a neighboring county, leaving behind a loaded rifle, digital camera, a backpack and a reusable shopping bag that was hanging from a chain-link fence.

Anonymous ID: 285018 Sept. 24, 2024, 10:57 p.m. No.21653290   🗄️.is đź”—kun   >>3348 >>3555 >>3562

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13888709/Nyckoletta-Martin-whistleblower-transplant-industry-organs.html

Transplant industry whistleblower claims she was pressured to harvest organs from a person who was still ALIVE and fired after complaining

A former employee of a nonprofit organ recovery group has claimed she was asked to harvest organs from a person who was still living - and then fired after airing her qualms to members of Congress.

Nyckoletta Martin, 38, made the latter revelations Tuesday to the Wall Street Journal, describing how she was let go by organ collection group Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates on September 13.

Days before, a letter she wrote to the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee was read and discussed on the House floor, after it alleged that there is currently outsized pressure on organ collectors.

Singling out the organ-procurement group in Kentucky where she worked, she recalled being pressured to retrieve organs from a patient before he died - while he was awake. He later left the facility alive, Martin said - choosing not to name him.

Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates, abbreviated KODA, is one of 56 federally chartered nonprofits tasked with procuring organs for transplant. A spokesperson said the firm 'strictly adheres' to laws and national guidelines set in place by the US government.

'What is clear to me from my time at KODA is that the [organ procurement organization] does not operate in patients' interests,' Martin, a mom-of-five, wrote in the letter sent to the committee.

'[The group] regularly engages in unethical activities for the sole purpose of trying to keep its lucrative government contract,' she added.

The letter went on to claim that when a surgeon refused an officials' order, Martin and other workers were ordered to find a different surgeon who would do it willingly.

They refused as well, she said - allowing the patient to later leave alive after he recovered.

The patient's condition and malady was not made clear by what was read, as other statements sent by alleged witnesses saying they have witnessed similar activity were read as well.

All insisted that procurement groups in various states - like KODA - have begun to push workers and surgeons to take organs from patients who were still alive.

A liver transplant surgeon at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Robert Cannon, told the committee how he was allegedly told to procure organs from a spontaneously breathing patient, which he said 'would have been murder.'

Greg Segal, head of an advocacy group that seeks to reform the organ procurement process, alleged another Organ Procurement Organization (OPO) had given potential organ donors doses of fentanyl to hasten their deaths.