Hard Boiled News

True Crime and News of the Weird from around the Globe

Cops Hunt Man Who Stole Signs Meant for the Blind Along a Hiking Trail

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U.S. Cops are asking for help identifying this man

GENESEE PARK, Colorado — Cops are hunting for a brazen thief who made off with 37 Braille interpretive signs meant to help the blind from a hiking trail in Colorado.

The Jefferson County Sheriff’s office says the man took the signs — valued at over $18,000 — from two trails in Genesee Park sometime between April 22 and May 6.

A man caught on surveillance footage stealing a laminated paper sign that had been placed in the park to replace one of the stolen signs is considered a “person of interest,” cops said.

Investigators described him as between 55- and 65-years-old, with white hair, but bald on top. They said he stands between 160 and 190 pounds at the time of the theft, and was wearing a blue jacket with white lettering on the left breast. He was accompanied by a small black dog, cops said.

Tipsters are encouraged to call the sheriff’s office at 303-271-5612.

Man Convicted in Bizarre Adult Adoption Immigration Scheme

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Helaman Hansen says he meant well, and making off with $1 million was just a coincidence

SACRAMENTO, California — A man accused of bilking hundreds of illegal immigrants out of over $1 million with the false promise of securing them citizenship by having them adopted as adults, has been convicted of fraud.

Helaman Hansen, 64, of Elk Grove, California was accused of running the bizarre and elaborate scheme from 2012 through 2016, netting as much as $10,000 from each of the immigrants he conned.

The scam was based around the bogus promise that the victims would be granted U.S. citizenship if they were legally adopted by an American. Hansen did arrange for several adult victims to be adopted but none ever received citizenship as the law only allows someone under the age of 16 to be granted such status following an adoption.

In reality, adult adoptions are exceedingly rare, and Hansen’s con came unwound when court officials in the Sacramento and Alameda Superior Courts noticed an unusual amount of such adoptions and grew suspicious that something wasn’t kosher.

Prosecutors say that Hansen had created a number of entities, such as Americans Helping America, to sell memberships in what he called a “Migration Program,” through which the adoptions would be arranged.  At the beginning, memberships were sold for an annual fee of $150, but that cost gradually grew as high as $10,000.

Many of Hansen’s victims were over the age of 50 and a substantial number hailed from Pacific island nations like Tonga, Fiji and New Zealand, prosecutors said.

In all, prosecutors say he duped over 500 people and collected over $1 million in fees.

After an 11-day trial, a federal jury found Hansen guilty of 12 counts of mail fraud, three counts of wire fraud, and two counts of encouraging and inducing illegal immigration for private financial gain. He faces up to 20 years in prison.

White Cop Files Race Discrimination Suit After Discovering He is Part Black

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Cleon Brown recently discovered that he is 18% black

HASTINGS, Michigan — A Michigan cop has filed a racial discrimination suit against his department, saying he became the subject of non-stop racist taunting after discovering he had black ancestry.

Sgt. Cleon Brown, 49, said in his civil suit that the police chief repeatedly called him “Kunta,” after the character Kunta Kinte in the famed slave epic, “Roots,” by Alex Haley. He said others whispered “Black Lives Matter,” and raised their fists in a black power salute as he walked past.

And at Christmas time, the sergeant said he found a black Santa figurine with “18%” written on its beard, in a stocking that hung in the department with Brown’s name on it.

The figure was a reference to the 18% black ancestry Brown discovered he had when he had done an Ancestry.com genetic test. Brown says department staff grew increasingly chilly towards him after he objected to the taunts, and began to ignore him completely after he filed a complaint with the equal employment opportunity commission.

The suit, filed in federal court, names Police Chief Jeff Pratt, City Manager Jeff Mansfield, and several others.

Brown found this statue in his office Christmas stocking

The department and Mansfield countered that it  was Brown who started the racial bantering and that others just followed suit when he would joke about his black ancestry. They accused Brown on engaging in “typical racial stereotypes.”

City officials told MLive.com that they weren’t even sure if Brown’s genetic makeup even qualified him as a protected class under civil rights laws.

Brown has served on the force since 1998 and had spent seven years in the Army before joining the Hastings department.

Black Suspect Busted in Racial Arson Attack He Tried to Pin on ‘White America’

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Curtis Flournoy is accused of setting a fire he tried to blame on ‘White America’

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina — Police arrested a black man for a racially-charged arson attack on a North Carolina store in which a threatening note was left that was signed “White America.”

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department say they busted 32-year-old Curtis Flournoy on Sunday for the attack and charged him with ethnic intimidation, burning a commercial building and writing anonymous and threatening letters.

Police had previously said they were investigating the attack Thursday evening on Charlotte’s Central Market, which sells South Asian products, as a hate crime. Investigators said a rock had been thrown through the store’s window and a fire set in its entrance way which burned itself out by the time authorities arrived.

No one was hurt.

A note found at the scene stated that refugee business owners weren’t wanted and “that they would torture the owner if they did not leave and go back to where they came from,” police said. The note was signed “White America.”

But video surveillance footage captured a black man leaving the scene.

 

The store’s owner, Kamal Dhimel, previously lived in Nepal and Bhutan before coming to the U.S. in 2010. He opened the store in 2014, selling goods from Nepal, India and Pakistan.

He told The Charlotte Observer that he hadn’t faced anti-immigrant attitudes in the U.S. before last week’s episode.

Police did not say what they believed Flournoy’s motive might have been. He has a long rap sheet with multiple arrests for drugs as well as damaging property and assaulting a government official. He is currently being held on $22,500 bond.

Bosnian War Criminal Sentenced for Lying About Past to Get U.S. Passport

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Slobo Maric was convicted of abusing Bosnian Croat prisoners of war like these men

JACKSONVILLE, Florida — An unemployed Florida man convicted of war crimes in Bosnia has been sentenced to a year-and-half in federal prison for lying about his past as a sadistic prison warden when he applied to become a  U.S. citizen.

Slobo Maric, 56, had been a member of the Bosnian army during the civil war that tore that country apart in the early 1990s. Authorities say that during that time he served as the second in command at an elementary school-turned detention center for captured Bosnian Croat soldiers in the city of Mostar.

Under his command, prison guards routinely meted out brutal beatings of the prisoners of war . They also sent them to the front lines to dig trenches, fill sandbags and carry away the dead, and many were killed by sniper fire and bombs, authorities said.

In 1994, Maric was arrested and charged with war crimes against prisoners but was released as part of a prisoner exchange the following year. In 1996, he applied for refugee status in the United States. Prosecutors say he lied about whether he had ever violated the law, and the application was granted.

He then moved to Jacksonville, Florida, and in 1998 became a permanent resident and once again lied about his past on the application. Two years later, Maric was indicted for war crimes in Bosnia and was tried and convicted in absentia. U.S. prosecutors say Maric hired a lawyer and filed letters in his own defense in the case.

Shortly after his conviction, Maric applied to become a U.S. citizen and lied once again about  his past and in 2002, he was granted citizenship.

Maric pleaded guilty to the fraud last July and will have his U.S. citizenship revoked after he has served his sentence. He will then be deported back to Bosnia where he will likely face jail time for his war crimes conviction.

Man Poses as Jew, Vandalizes Own House with Swastikas, Is Arrested

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Andrew King not only wasn’t targeted for being Jewish — he’s not even Jewish

SCHENECTADY, New York — They may be considered God’s chosen people, but this guy wasn’t included.

Police in upstate New York have arrested a man who allegedly painted swastikas on his own home and falsely reporting it as a hate crime.

In an even odder twist, the man, Andrew King, isn’t Jewish despite claiming to be so and wearing a yarmulke in interviews with reporters on television.

After a five-week investigation into the Feb. 10 incident, cops determined that the 54-year-old King did it himself.

“Our detectives interviewed many witnesses in the neighborhood to determine if anyone saw anyone do this,” said Sgt. Matt Dearing of the Schenectady police. “We take this very seriously.”

And when WTEN-TV asked local Jewish groups around Schenectady for comment, many leaders said they didn’t know King. Several people who do know him said he isn’t Jewish, although he has tried to convert more than once but has been turned away.

King was also charged in a separate case in which he is accused of harassing a county employee. He claimed in court that he was roughed up by police leaving him with two black eyes.

“He had no altercation with us when he was brought in yesterday,” Dearing said.

Four Teens Arrested for Turning Menorah into Swastika

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An Arizona family was stunned to find their menorah turned into a swastika

CHANDLER, Arizona — Police in Arizona have busted four teens for a chilling act of vandalism in which a family’s front-lawn Hanukkah menorah was reconfigured into a swastika.

Clive Jamar Wilson was among those arrested

The Chandler police department says the episode occurred Dec. 30, when someone went into the family’s yard and taken their eight-foot high menorah, which had been fashioned out of PVC piping, and turned it into a symbol of hate.

On Friday, cops say they busted 19-year-old Clive Jamar Wilson, and three juvenile males, whose names were not made public, on charges of criminal trespass and aggravated criminal damage. All four were released pending the submission of charges to the Maricopa County Attorney’s office, police said.

At the time of the incident, the FBI said it was investigating to see if vandalism constituted a hate crime. Police say the investigation is ongoing.

“It just makes me sad and it makes me feel sick that’s still how people look at the world in 2016,” Seth Ellis, who built the menorah for his children said at the time.

Florida Man Pleads to Burning Cross on Interracial Couple’s Lawn

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Thomas Sigler had harassed his black neighbor since he moved in

PORT RICHEY, Florida — A Florida racist outraged by an interracial couple that was living next door, pleaded guilty to burning a cross on the their front yard on Halloween night five years ago.

Thomas Herris Sigler, 45, was living in a predominantly white neighborhood of Port Richey in 2012 when a black man moved in with a white woman next door, federal prosecutor said.

Sigler was so aggrieved by the situation, prosecutors say he repeatedly hurled racial epithets at him and one time even punched him in the face solely because of his race.

Then on Halloween night that year, Sigler went to a party at another neighbor’s house, where he and several others decided to burn a cross in the front yard of the interracial couple to force them to move out.

They then gathered wood and fashioned a cross on which they poured gasoline. They then carried it over to the couple’s front yard, leaned it against the mailbox and set it on fire, prosecutors said.

“It is sad that crosses are being burned in front yards in the 21st century. Acts of hatred such as this simply cannot be tolerated under law,” said U.S. Attorney A. Lee Bentley.

One of the perpetrators of the hate-filled spectacle, Pascual Carlos Pietri, was arrested not long after, and in 2015, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in prison.

Pascual Pietri pleaded guilty to the cross burning in 2015

Sigler and another man, William Dennis, 56, were indicted in September for their alleged roles in the racially-charged episode.

Both Pietri and Sigler have long rap sheets. Pietri has served time for drug trafficking, auto theft, assault and burglary. Sigler has been charged with kidnapping, sexual battery and burglary in separate cases.

North Idaho Man Charged In Catholic Church Burning

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St. Ann’s Catholic Church was burned to the ground

BONNERS FERRY, Idaho — A contractor from northern Idaho has been charged with setting fire to the Catholic church in his town and burning it to ground last year.

Federal prosecutors say Shane Rucker, 33, of Bonners Ferry, entered St. Ann’s Catholic Church alight last April 21, and set fires in three places in the basement, starting a blaze that eventually consumed the entire building.

Rucker, who has a lengthy rap sheet with arrests for burglary, drugs and domestic violence, was charged in federal court in Coeur D’Alene on Friday with destroying religious property under the Church Arson Prevention Act. He was held without bail and faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

The law was passed in 1996 in response to a spate of arson attacks on black churches in the south. Authorities did not publicly disclose a motive and the indictment against was sealed by the judge.

Shane Rucker has a long rap sheet

Father Carlos Perez said the church had been vandalized a month before the alleged arson, with the sanctuary desecrated with satanic symbols and a cross stolen from the tabernacle. A Lutheran Church in the area was also vandalized at the time.

“As a priest I pray confession for him because I know he is a human being,” Perez told the Bonners Ferry Herald. “But he has to pay for his mistake. I tell you, we didn’t do anything to him and he has no idea how many people are suffering from his actions.”

He said the church is used by about 150 families and the Diocese of Boise said it had served the community for over 100 years. While insurance will cover a substantial part of the cost to rebuild, church officials say they will have to raise over $500,000 themselves to make up for the shortfall.

The congregation is currently using a group of temporary trailers for services.

Missing KKK Imperial Wizard Found Dead in Missouri

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Klan boss Frank Ancona had warned that protests in Ferguson, Mo. had awoken “a sleeping giant”

LEADWOOD, Missouri — A Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard who disappeared last week has been found dead in Missouri, police said.

The body of 51-year-old Frank Ancona was discovered on the banks of the Big River in central Missouri a day after authorities found his car parked nearby. Investigators found evidence of “a burn pile,” near the car and officials were awaiting the results of an autopsy.

Ancona is the Imperial Wizard of the Traditionalist American Knights, a Missouri chapter of the KKK. He rose to national attention in 2014, when he said the protests in Ferguson, Missouri against the police shooting of black teenager Michael Brown had awoken a “sleeping giant” and threatened “lethal force” would be used to protect white people and police from “terrorists.”

His wife, Malissa, told police he was last seen on Wednesday when he got a call from work asking him to make a delivery in another part of the state. But investigators later determined he had not been contacted by the company.

The Daily Journal newspaper reported that police found that a safe in Ancona’s home had been broken into with a crowbar and its contents taken and police say they do not suspect burglary.

Ancona’s collection of guns was also missing, but the gun he usually carried was left at home, which he relatives said was suspicious, the newspaper reported.

Ancona’s wife said that when her husband left, he said he wanted a divorce and had taken some belongings with him.

“Frank and I weren’t getting along too well,” Malissa told KFVS-TV. “We were working on our marriage. He told me when he got back he was filing for divorce and took a bag of clothes with him.”