Hard Boiled News

True Crime and News of the Weird from around the Globe

Fugitive Eco-Terrorist Nabbed In Cuba After 12 Years On the Run

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Fugitive Joseph Mahmoud Dibee was last seen in the U.S. in 2005.

PORTLAND, Oregon  — One of the last remaining fugitive members of a dangerous eco-terrorist group behind a string of arson fires that caused millions of dollars in damage has been caught after more than a decade on the lam, the FBI said.

Joseph Mahmoud Dibee, 50, was apprehended after investigators got a tip he was traveling through Central America on his way to Russia with a planned stop in Cuba, according to court documents.

With the help of Cuban authorities, Dibee was arrested there before boarding a plane bound for Moscow and was then sent back to the United States to face justice.

Dibee was a member of “The Family,” a notorious band of environmental radicals who set more than 40 arson fires at development sites in the Western United States between1995 and 2001. The fires caused more than $45 million in damages, with a 1998 arson attack on a ski resort in Vail, Colorado its most brazen act. That blaze caused $26 million in damages.

A fire set by The Family at a Vail, Colorado ski resort in 1998

Dibee fled the U.S. in December 2005. The following year, he was indicted along with 11 co-conspirators and has been on the run since.

“The crimes they committed were serious and dangerous,” said Special Agent Tim Suttles, who has been working on the investigation since 2004. “Just because time passes doesn’t mean the FBI forgets. We are very gratified to have Dibee in custody.”

Dibee’s capture leaves one fugitive from the group still at large. Josephine Sunshine Overaker, a U.S. citizen believed to be either 43 or 46 years old, fled to Europe in late 2001 and hasn’t been seen since.

“She’s the last one,” Suttles said, explaining that Overaker faces 19 felony counts in Oregon, Colorado, and Washington State. “We will continue to pursue her and to run down every lead that comes to us. We’re not going to give up just because time has passed.”

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Georgia Sheriff in Hot Water for Buying $70K Muscle Car With Federal Grant

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The Gwinnett County sheriff bought this $70K muscle car with cash it got from a federal grant

LAWRENCEVILLE, Georgia — The U.S. justice department is demanding tis money back from a Georgia sheriff who used a government grant to buy a $70,000 muscle car that he uses to drive to and from work.

In a letter to Gwinnett County Sheriff Butch Conway  the DOJ characterized the purchase of a Dodge Charger Hellcat — a 707-horsepower muscle car that some have called the fastest sedan ever built — as “extravagant.”

The purchase of the vehicle, which was paid for with federal asset forfeiture funds, was initially approved, but now the feds are questioning if the Hellcat is being used for what the department said they planned to use it for.

Conway stands behind the purchase.

“Sheriff Conway maintains that this vehicle is an appropriate purchase, especially for an agency with a $92 million budget and the opportunity this vehicle provides in making our roadways safer,” Deputy Shannon Volkodav, a sheriff’s office spokeswoman, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The initial application said the car could  be used for a program that stages drag races in controlled environments to educate drivers about the dangers of illegal street racing. The department also said the car could be sued to undercover and covert operations.

But the DOJ questioned the car was a legitimate purchase.

“The vehicle in question is a high-performance vehicle not typically purchased as part of a traditional fleet of law enforcement vehicles,” the department wrote in a letter to the sheriff.

The sheriff’s office defended the claim, saying he sheriff also used it “when he participates in field operations, covert and otherwise, with our deputies.

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13-Year-Old Beheaded by Drug Dealers After Seeing Grandmother Killed

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Oralia Mendoza (l) was stabbed and 13-year-old Mariah Lopez beheaded in a drug deal gone bad

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama — A 13-year-old girl with special needs was beheaded by drug dealers after witnessing them stab her grandmother to death in an Alabama cemetery, investigators said.

The grisly slayings came at the end of a drug deal gone bad, as the grandmother, Oralia Mendoza, who was associated with the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel, went with three others, including her boyfriend, to pick up a batch of methamphetamine in Georgia.

After one of Mendoza’s drug partners grew suspicious that she was going to set them up, the gang drove her and her granddaughter, Mariah Lopez, to a cemetery in Owens Cross Road.

There they stabbed Mendoza and left her to die. They then marched Lopez into the woods where they beheaded her, Investigator Stacy Rutherford told a Madison County judge, according to AL.com.

Israel Palomino, 34, and 26-year-old Yoni Aguilar — who was Mendoza’s boyfriend — have been charged with two counts each of capital murder. Investigators say Aguilar confessed and also pointed the finger at Palomino.

The cross-state drug trip began on June 2, when Palomino, Aguilar, Mendoza and a woman named Leticia Garcia went to pick up a quarter kilo of meth in Norcross, Georgia. At some point, on the way back, Palomino grew concerned that Mendoza was setting them up, Rutherford testified.

On June 4, Mendoza was told she and Lopez would be taken somewhere safe, but were instead taken to the cemetery where Mendoza was killed.  Because Lopez witnessed the slaying, the suspects took her to a secluded area in the woods to kill her.

Yoni Aguilar (l) and Israel Palomino face capital murder charges

In his statement, Aguilar said Palomino forced him to kill the girl. “He said he was fearful of Israel,” Rutherford testified.

Three days later, Lopez’s body was found. Less than an hour after police released a description of the girl’s clothes to the media, her mother came in and said she believed it was her daughter who had been missing. Mendoza’s body was found a week later after cops zeroed in on Aguilar and Palomino.

 

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Gang Members Charged With Carving Crew’s Name on 15-Year-Old’s Chest

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The attackers were members of M.O.B. 662, a Bloods gang affiliate in Michigan

FLINT, Michigan — Four ruthless gang members have been charged with brutally beating a 15-year-old boy and carving their crew’s name on his chest with a knife, prosecutors said.

The assault occurred last November, when the four members of M.O.B. 662 — a local affiliate of the notorious Bloods — spotted the teen selling marijuana in Genesee Township, Michigan. They then assaulted the boy, robbed him and carved their crew’s name into his chest, federal prosecutors said.

“This case is a stark reminder that the influence of violent street gangs extends beyond the big cities and into smaller communities such as our own,” said Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton.

Doniel “Dee Red” Heard of Canton, Talasha Willis of Flint, Kimberly “Boss Lady” Perryman of Mt. Morris, and Alina White of Waterford are each charged with a count of assault with a dangerous weapon in aid of racketeering, and a count of interference with commerce by robbery.

Prosecutors say the gang members committed the vicious attack in order to “gain entrance to, maintain, and increase their positions in the gang.”

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Inmate Convicted in Plot to Kill Ex-Wife With Mail Bomb from Dark Web

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Michael James used a contraband cell phone to organize the mail bomb plot from behind bars

COLUMBIA, South Carolina — A jail inmate serving a 50-year sentence for killing his father-in-law, has been convicted of trying to murder his ex-wife with a package bomb he had bought on the dark web from behind bars.

Michael James Young, Jr., 32, had hatched the elaborate plot while serving time in a maximum security prison in South Carolina for a 2007 shopping mall shooting in which he wounded his wife and killed his father-in-law when he got in the way. Young pleaded guilty in 2011.

The bomb plot to get back at his ex-wife began when Young was able to get a cell phone and get onto the dark web — a secretive part of the Internet where illicit activity occurs, such as drug dealing, gun-running and the exchange of child pornography.

Early last year, Young made contact with a person he thought was a European arms dealer, but was, in fact, an undercover FBI agent. “Let me ask you this … could u possibly booby trap a box? So that as soon its opened … boom? Just curious,” Young asked.

Through the exchange, Young arranged for the purported arms dealer to send a package bomb to friend’s home in Irmo, South Carolina. A second pal, Vance “Dank” Volious received a shipping label with Young’s ex-wife’s name and address on it.

The person who received the bomb and Volious, then handed the package and address label to Tyrell Fears, who brought it to the post office and mailed it. The whole exchange was monitored by the FBI, and after Fears posted the package, he, Volious and Young were all arrested.

In addition to the bomb plot, Young had similarly used his contraband cell phone to operate an illicit marijuana dealing operation with Volious.

At the time of their arrests, the State newspaper reported that it was believed that Young wanted his ex-wife dead so she couldn’t testify against him if he were to win a retrial on his original conviction.

He and Volious face 45 years in prison when they are sentenced in the bomb plot. Fears pleaded guilty last year.

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Brooklyn Mobsters Threatened Doc to Write Scripts for 230K Oxycodone Pills

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The mobsters admitted capitalizing on the opioid epidemic

NEW YORK — Two mobsters strong-armed a Brooklyn doctor into writing prescriptions for hundreds of thousands of Oxycodone pills by threatening to put a bullet in his head if he stopped, federal prosecutors said.

Anthony Grado, a 54-year-old foot soldier in the Luchese family, was caught on tape telling the doctor that he would feed him “to the f**king lions” if he ever wrote prescriptions without the family’s permission, prosecutors said.

The shakedown came to light as Grado and his accomplice, Lawrence Tranese, 55, pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiracy to distribute Oxycodone in Brooklyn federal court.

The men admitted that they enlisted the help of other gangsters to fill the prescriptions and they would then sell them, the US Attorney’s office said. In all, they purloined 230,000 of the highly addictive pills through the scheme.

Grado used a mixture of threats and violence to keep the doctor in line.  At one point, Grado was recorded saying, “I’ll put a bullet right in your head,” if the doctor’s new prescription pads “go in anybody’s hands” but his.

Later, the doctor was stabbed by a Luchese associate on Grado’s orders, prosecutors said.

“Lucchese family member Grado imperiled our community, threatening a doctor to force him to write prescriptions for Oxycodone and then trafficking in the addictive drugs,” said Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue. “Violent threats to a doctor by Mafia defendants, combined with their trafficking of Oxycodone pills, posed an especially serious danger to our community.”

The defendants face up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $1 million when sentenced.

 

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3 Nine Trey Gangsters Convicted in 2015 Murder Spree That Killed 5 in Virginia

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Malek Lassiter (l), Nathaniel Mitchell and Anthony Simmons were convicted in a brutal 33-day killing spree

NORFOLK, Virginia — Three members of a brutal gang dubbed a “fraternity of death,” by prosecutors, have been convicted of a violent 33-day crime spree in 2015 in which five people were murdered and six others wounded.

It took a federal jury just five hours to convict the three members of the Nine Trey Gangsters who killed the victims for reasons stemming from witness intimidation, retaliation against perceived disrespect and robbery.

In one case, a woman was shot and killed because two gang members were vying to see who could kill more people and she was simply walking on the wrong side of the street, prosecutors said.

Antonio Lee Simmons, 38, who prosecutors described as the gang’s leader, faces multiple life sentences. Nathaniel Mitchell, 25, one of the gang’ “shooters” was found guilty of four of the killings and also faces numerous life sentences.

Malek Lassiter, a 22-year recruit who took part in the spree as part of his initiation into the gang,  faces a minimum of 85 years on racketeering and assault charges.

Three other gang members had previously pleaded guilty to their roles in the murder spree that stretched from Chesapeake, Norfolk and Portsmouth to Virginia Beach during the holiday season in 2015.

Trial testimony revealed that the bloody orgy of violence was triggered when Simmons got into trouble with his superiors for messing up the gang’s finances. The hope was that the spree would help him pay back the money. But it also stemmed from a war between Simmons and the leader of another line of Nine Trey Gangsters, which is a branch of the United Bloods Nation.

From approximately Thanksgiving through Christmas of 2015, the gang members murdered two men and three women, most of whom had no affiliation with the gang, prosecutors said.

Among the victims, Linda Lassiter, 48, and her boyfriend Wayne Davis, 48, were killed just weeks after speaking to the police about a gang-connected shooting at her daughter’s house.

Another victim, Al-Tariq Tynes, 26, was killed because gang members thought he was talking to police. His body was stuffed in the trunk of his car and driven around for days before he was dumped into a ditch.

Jamesha Roberts, 25, a young mother of two children under the age of five, was gunned down in Norfolk after her shift at the airport Starbucks. Trial testimony revealed that Mitchell was in a competition with another Nine Trey member to see who could shoot the most people,  and killed her for “walking on the wrong side of the street.”

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Pimp Turned in By High School Teacher Mom After Prostituting Her Student

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Pimp Sean Hayes hit a little too close to home in finding a new worker for his escort business

MILWAUKEE — A mother’s love only goes so far.

A Milwaukee pimp was busted after his mother, who is a high school teacher, turned him in for prostituting one of her students.

Sean Hayes, 50, is accused of approaching the 17-year-old girl who was living in a group home as she waited for the bus, telling her she could be a model and giving her a card for “Shining Stars Adult Entertainment,” cops said.

The following day, Hayes had sex with her and then got her into the sex trade. Between August and October of last year, he had the girl — who worked under the name “Honey” — travel to Waukesha, Wauwatosa, Green Bay and Chicago to have sex for money, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported, citing the criminal complaint.

But then the girl told her teacher at James E. Groppi High School, who happened to be Hayes’ mother, that she was working for him as an escort. She then called the cops.

Hayes has denied the allegations. He says he was approached by a girl by the name Honey, but that he wouldn’t let her work for him because she wouldn’t show him identification.

Hayes is scheduled to go to trial June 18 on sex trafficking charges.

 

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Tennessee Drug Lord Who Shot His Own Son Convicted in Trafficking Case

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James “Boogie” Simonton’s drug empire was brought down after he shot his own son

GREENEVILLE, Tennessee — A cocaine kingpin was convicted of running a drug trafficking empire that only came to light when he shot his own son for knocking over his motorcycles.

James “Boogie” Simonton, 50, of Kingsport, Tennessee, faces a minimum of 15 years for his conviction in federal court on drug conspiracy and weapons charges.

Police initially caught wind Simonton when his 23-year-old son, James Jr., and a 14-year-old pal, showed up at a local hospital with multiple gunshot wounds and in a car riddled with bullet holes.

The day before the shooting, police say the younger Simonton had knocked over four of his father’s motorcycles with his car, causing thousands of dollars in damage. The son had apparently accused his father of stealing his cell phone.

As detectives investigated they discovered that the elder Simonton and another of his sons had been involved in smuggling large amounts of crack cocaine from Georgia into Tennessee. They also found the weapon he used to shoot his son — a Hungarian-made AK-63 assault rifle — as well as other guns.

After his arrest, and while in a federal lock-up, investigators say Simonton threatened a cooperating witness against him in an effort to influence the person’s testimony.  Simonton was also convicted of intimidating a witness.

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Sultry ‘Cocaine Cowgirl’ Pleads Guilty to Drug Smuggling Charges Down Under

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Isabelle Lagace (l) and Melina Roberge chronicled their drug-smuggling tour on Instagram

SYDNEY, Australia — This pleasure cruise has sunk.

A comely Canadian tourist has pleaded guilty to smuggling $30 million worth of cocaine into Australia during a round-the-world voyage she and pal chronicled through sultry photo shoots on Instagram.

Melina Roberge, 25, and her pal Isabelle Lagace, 30, both of Quebec, had been traveling for 40 days aboard the Sea Princess when they were caught with two giant suitcases stuffed with nearly 200 pounds of cocaine as the ship docked in Sydney.

The seizure was one of the largest of its kind in Australian history.

Lagace, a former porn model, pleaded guilty in November, saying she agreed to smuggle the drugs to clear a $20,000 debt she owed. She was sentenced to 4 ½ years in prison.

Melina Roberge

Roberge had initially insisted she didn’t know the drugs were in the bags, but changed her story in hopes of a more favorable sentence. An accomplice, Andre Tamine, 65, also pleaded guilty.

The story made international headlines due to the fact that the two women had posted numerous bikini shots online as they made stops in the U.S., South America and the South Pacific.

The two were dubbed “cocaine cowgirls” — a reference to the free-wheeling, south Florida drug importers of the 1980s who were called “cocaine cowboys.”

 

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