Hard Boiled News

True Crime and News of the Weird from around the Globe

Lawyer in Biggest Social Security Scam in History May Have Fled to Mexico

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Eric Conn’s ads dotted the Kentucky landscape

LEXINGTON, Kentucky — A disability lawyer who went on the lam after being convicted of stealing over half a billion dollars in the biggest Social Security scam in history has been sentenced in absentia to 12 years in prison and ordered to pay back $170 million.

Authorities say Eric Conn, who was held under home detention in Kentucky after his conviction in March, in snipped off his electronic monitoring anklet on June 2 and went on the run.

The FBI says it has tracked Conn to New Mexico where he has been spotted buying gas and shopping at Walmart.  They say Conn fled using a truck owned by a friend who had registered it to a dummy corporation in Montana.

The truck has been recovered in New Mexico near the Mexico border, although officials say they have no evidence Conn had fled into Mexico.

“The negative impact of Conn’s presence in our community will be felt for generations,” said FBI agent Amy Hess. “His flight from prosecution has diminished any legitimacy and integrity he once held as an attorney and officer of the court.”

The FBI has tracked Eric Conn as far as New Mexico where he was spotted shopping in Walmart

Conn, 56, was a well known figure in Kentucky with ads appearing on TV nonstop and ambulance chasing billboards dotting the landscape. He earned millions by representing thousands of clients pressing for disability claims from Social Security. But it was all a fraud, prosecutors said. In all, they say he defrauded the government out of $550 million.

Con was also seen shopping in a New Mexico Walmart

Conn admitted he had routinely presented false evidence of disabilities, paid unscrupulous doctors to rubber stamp forms and even bribed a Social Security judge who approved thousands of claims for Conn’s clients in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

A second judge has admitted retaliating against a whistleblower who tried to blow the lid off Conn’s sleazy dealings with the judge. Both judges are awaiting sentencing.

At his sentencing, Judge Danny Reeves gave Conn the maximum jail term allowed by law, but acknowledged that 12 years didn’t fit the crime.

“It did hurt the entire system and the reverberations are still occurring,” Reeves said, according to the Lexington Herald Leader.

Three Sentenced in $19 Million Maple Syrup Heist

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TROIS-RIVIERES, Canada — Call it sweet justice.

Three men have been sentenced to prison for stealing nearly $19 million worth of Canadian maple syrup.

The ringleader, Richard Vallieres, 38,  was given an eight-year sentence and ordered to pay $9.4 million in fines. If he is unable to do so, he will be hit with an additional six years behind bars, a judge ruled.

Vallieres’ father and another man, who served as a syrup reseller, were sentenced to two year terms, the Canadian Broadcasting Company reported. Some 26 people have been arrested in connection with the heist.

The elaborate plot involved Vallieres and his accomplices draining barrels of the syrup held in the warehouses of the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, a regulatory body that oversees Canada’s trade, and replacing the sweet elixir with water.

Richard Vallieres

The scheme came unraveled when regulators conducting a spot check found a barrel filled with water rather than the expected maple goodness.

An investigation revealed that Vallieres and his partners had walked off with 3,000 tons of syrup over the course of several months in 2012.

Vallieres claimed he only participated in the scheme out of fear of a crooked syrup dealer who had had threatened him with a gun and warned that his family could get hurt.

He and the others are appealing their convictions.

Couple Busted in Old School ‘Pigeon Drop’ Con Targeting Elderly Women

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Vanessa Favors and Milous Brown keep their scams old school

KENNER, Louisiana — A con artist posing as a devoutly religious woman and her boyfriend have been charged with running an old-fashioned “pigeon drop” scam to bilk an elderly woman out of her cash.

Police say Vanessa Favors, 61, of Atlanta, Georgia., and Milous Brown, 74, of Birmingham, Alabama, were busted after targeting a 65-year-old woman at a store in Kenner, Louisiana, but say they have been arrested for running similar scams in the past.

“We certainly believe they are traveling and preying on the elderly to scam them,” Kenner Police Lt. Brian McGregor told the New Orleans Times-Picayune. “We’ve also been in contact with other police jurisdictions who are reviewing similar cases.”

In a “pigeon drop”con, scamsters typically pretend to find a bag, wallet containing a large sum of cash, and approach their mark asking if the bag belongs to them. The fraudsters then propose splitting the money, but only after agreeing to a complicated arrangement in which the victim hands over cash as security while a lawyer ensures their keeping the money is legal.

In this case, Favors is charged with approaching the woman outside a Kenner grocery store. Favors, who was carrying a bible, asked the woman if she dropped her bag and then opened a purse holding a large wad of cash.

Favors offered to share the money for a fee and got the woman to agree to drive to a nearby where Favors said she planned to contact an attorney, cops said. On the drive over, cops say Favors began reciting biblical verse loudly, distracting the victim while she stole her wallet.

When they arrived at Wal-Mart, Favors took the handbag and the victim’s wallet inside where she met with Brown and quickly ran up several hundred dollars worth of items on the woman’s credit cards.

It was only after Favors did not return that the woman became suspicious and realized her wallet was gone.

Police believe the couple pulled off a similar scam on a 69-year-old woman outside a Winn Dixie in Kenner in 2013. Investigators believe other victims may have been targeted in and around New Orleans but may not have come forward because they were embarrassed.

Fraudster Doc Who Faked His Own Death to Avoid Jail Finally Faces the Music

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Svadjian paid $200 or this phony death certificate in Russia

LOS ANGELES — A doctor who went on the lam 15 years ago to avoid being tried for fraud and then bribed police in Russia to help him fake his own death, has been sentenced to 2 ½ years for fleeing justice.

Tigran Svadjian, a 58-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Armenia who worked as a doctor in Los Angeles and Fresno, had agreed to plead guilty in 2002 to stealing $2.4 million from Medi-Cal by billing for tests he never performed on patients who were dead.

But Svadjian fled to Russia just before he was due in court, leaving his wife and son behind, federal prosecutors said.

Later that year, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow received notification that Svadjian had died of pneumonia and that his body had been cremated. The embassy then issued a death certificate which Svadjian’s lawyers presented to prosecutors.

Svadjian later admitted he had paid a Russian cop $200 in 2002 to submit a phony official report about his death to the embassy. Svadjian then obtained a fraudulent Russian passport in a different name, Vasily Petrosov, and relocated to Hurghada, Egypt, where he worked as a scuba instructor, remarried and had two kids.

In 2013, after years of trying to get further confirmation of Svadjian’s death, prosecutors dismissed the health care fraud case.

But late last year, Svadjian was arrested in Egypt after being deported by Ukrainian authorities when he tried to enter the country on a fake Lithuanian passport. When Egyptian authorities searched his home, they found an old U.S. passport with his true name.

In a sentencing memorandum, prosecutors said Svadjian “did not simply flee from prosecution.”

“Instead, defendant planned and implemented a sophisticated, fraudulent scheme that involved bribing foreign officials, using false statements to mislead U.S. State Department officials into creating a false death certificate, and submitting that false certificate to federal prosecutors. Defendant then hid from U.S. authorities through the use of false identities for approximately 15 years. He abandoned his wife, son, and parents, and started a whole new life without them because he did not want to spend time in prison.”

But since the initial fraud case had been dismissed, the evidence against Svadjian had been destroyed and prosecutors were only able to charge him with fleeing prosecution.

“Did the defendant get away with his scheme? Yes, Mr. Svadjian, to a degree you were successful,” Judge Michael Fitzgerald said, according to the Los Angeles Times. “You deserve 60 months

Modern-Day Cattle Rustler Gets 10 Years in Multi-Million Dollar Scam

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Authorities say the case involved one of the biggest cattle scams in Texas history

FORT WORTH, Texas — It was cattle rustling for the modern age.

A cattle trader has been sentenced to 10 years in a federal prison in one of the largest cattle fraud cases in Texas history in which he stole millions of dollars from a major livestock brokering firm by claiming to sell tens of thousand of heads of cattle to phony “big money” Texas rancher.

Tony Eugene Lyon, 52, of Fort Worth, pleaded guilty last November in federal court to a single count of wire fraud in the case that rocked the tight-knit cattle-trading world.

Prosecutors say Lyon was well-known trader in the North Texas cattle markets, engaging in buying, fattening, and selling cattle, as well as securing pastureland and transporting them. But he also once served 37 months in prison for bank fraud.

Through his work, Lyon became a representative in North Texas for Sidney, Nebraska-based Midwestern Cattle Marketing firm and bought and sold cattle on their behalf.

Federal prosecutors say that in early 2014, Lyon told the firm they could save money if they purchased cattle directly from him. They agreed, and Lyon was provided with MCM checks and a signature stamp, enabling him to purchase cattle without having to wait for authorization.

Tony Lyon played fast and loose with how he bought and sold cattle

Between Feb. 4 and June 29, 2015, prosecutors say Lyon told MCM he bought more than 50,000 head of cattle from a firm called the George Cattle Company, located in Fort Worth, Texas, which he said was  owned by a man named John George. In total, $87 million was purportedly spent in over 130 transactions.

But prosecutors say there was no John George and the George Cattle Company was just a figment of Lyon’s imagination. In reality, he was using the cash to pay off his and his parents’ debts and lining their pockets in an elaborate check-kiting scheme.

Prosecutors say the house of cards collapsed in June 2015, when a cash shortfall led Midwestern Cattle’s president, Jason O’Connell, to drive all night from Nebraska to confront Lyon.

O’Connell testified that Lyon confessed that “there were no cattle, there was no George Cattle Company, and there was no money to turn over.” When later deposed, Lyon asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refused to answer the question.

In the end, Lyon’s scheme caused MCM to suffer $5.1 million in losses and knocked them out of business.

In a separate civil case in Texas, a January, a jury awarded MCM $23.1 million in damages.

“At its heart, this case was about the reputation of the Texas livestock industry. I told the jury they had the power to send a message to the rest of the country that Texans do not tolerate cattle fraud and they would protect all people who buy and sell cattle in the Lone Star State. And, God Bless Texas, this jury definitely sent that message,” MCM lawyer Chris Trowbridge said in a statement at the time.

In their defense, Lyons and his parents argued that it was MCM’s own fault for entrusting him with the checkbook and that they should have known better because of Lyons’ earlier fraud conviction.

 

 

 

Strongman Champ Known as ‘White Rhino’ Shoots Self as FBI Closes In

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Gerard Benderoth was once ranked the 10th strongest man in the world

HAVERSTRAW, New York — A retired cop and strongman champion known as the “White Rhino” fatally shot himself in front of a school after being pulled over by FBI agents who were about to arrest him, authorities said.

Gerard Benderoth, 48, was about to be indicted on charges related to a quintuple homicide and drug conspiracy case brought by federal prosecutors in December against retired Westchester cop Nicholas Tartaglione, a bodybuilder and pal of Benderoth’s, the North Rockland Daily Voice reported.

As federal agents closed in to arrest Benderoth Wednesday morning and began tailing him with flashing lights, he pulled over near an elementary school, pulled out a gun and shot himself.

The FBI confirmed the episode, but declined to say why they had pulled Benderoth over and the nature of the charges he faced was not immediately clear.

Benderoth had been a cop for two decades, working as a New York City police officer until 2006 and then joining the force in the town of Haverstraw, about 35 miles north of the city. He retired two years ago.

But he had gained his greatest notoriety through his participation in strongman competitions where contestants exhibit feats of great strength, like carrying 450-pound boulders, pushing truck tires and pulling tractor trailers long distances.

Weighing 360 pounds, the behemoth Benderoth was able to deadlift 800 pounds and lift 185 pounds with one arm. In 2004, he was ranked 10th as the strongest man in the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48RVXJhvc4o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHTbZCM2Jnk

In December, federal prosecutors charged Tartaglione with the gangland slaying of four men as part of a cocaine deal gone wrong. They disappeared last April and their bodies were found in December on Tartaglione’s property.

A retired Briarcliff Manor police officer, Tartaglione could face the death penalty in the case.

 

 

 

Smuggler Gets 11 Years in Plot to Send U.S. Technology to Russian Military

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Prosecutors said the sophisticated electronics could be used in Russian missile systems

NEW YORK — The manager of a Texas-based front company was sentenced to 11 years in prison for his role in smuggling $50 million worth of sophisticated electronic components to the Russian military.

Alexander Posobilov, 62, of Houston, was accused of procuring cutting-edge microelectronic equipment from U.S. companies and then evading tight American export restrictions and shipping them to companies in Russia that supplied the Russian Ministry of Defense.

“Export laws exist as an important part of our national security framework and protecting national assets from ending up in the hands of our potential adversaries is one of our highest priorities,” said acting assistant attorney general for national security, Mary McCord.

The items in question —  digital signal processors, micro-controllers, amplifiers and field programmable gate arrays — are not manufactured in Russia and are often used for military radar and surveillance systems, missile guidance systems and detonation triggers, federal prosecutors said.

Authorities say that between 2002 and 2012, Posobilov’s company, Arc Electronics, Inc., shipped approximately $50 million worth of microelectronics and other technologies to Russia.

The ultimate recipients of these products included a research unit for Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, which succeeded the KGB following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Russian concerns that builds air and missile defense systems and electronic warfare systems for the Ministry of Defense.

Prosecutors say Posobilov and his team lied to the American companies about the intended purpose for the electronics and then falsified export documents to send them out of the country.

Posobilov was one of 11 people and two companies charged in 2012 as part of the conspiracy to export the restricted equipment. He and two co-conspirators were convicted in 2015, five others pleaded guilty and three more remain at large.

Houston-based Arc Electronics, for which Posobilov served as procurement manager, has since been shut down. The company’s owner and mastermind behind the operation, Alexander Fishenko, was sentenced to 10 years in prison last year after pleading guilty.

A second company in Russia to which Arc sold its wares, Apex System, LLC, failed to appear in court.

Florida Man Charged in Bomb Plot Aimed at Sinking Target’s Stock Price

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Mark Barnett

OCALA, Florida  — This guy took the notion that Wall Street is just filled with a bunch of criminals a bit too far.

A Florida man has been charged with plotting to set off bombs at 10 Target stores along the East Coast in a bizarre scheme to drive the company’s stock price down so he could buy it on the cheap and make a killing when it went back up.

Federal prosecutors say Mark Barnett, 48, of Ocala, had paid a man $10,000 to set the bombs on shelves in stores stretching from Florida to New York.

The Orlando Sentinel reported that on Feb. 9, Barnett gave the man the explosives, gloves, a mask and cover to obscure his license plate. But instead of carrying out the plan, the man went to authorities and turned Barnett in.

Officials say the bombs were powerful enough that they could have killed or seriously injured anyone who was nearby when they went off.

Barnett was being held by local authorities on a variety of parole violations related to grand theft and sexual assault charges.

 

 

Ugandan Official Buried with $55K to Bribe Way Past Pearly Gates

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Charles Obong tried to take $55,000 with him in case he needed to atone for his sins

LIRA, Uganda — They say you can’t take it with you, but don’t tell Charles Obong.

The recently-deceased Ugandan government official instructed relatives to bury him with $55,000 in cash to offer to God for his sins.

Uganda’s Daily Monitor newspaper reports that Obong, who served for 10 years as a public service officer, died from a long illness on Dec. 17 and was buried in his ancestral village in the country’s north.

While Obong didn’t specify in his will what sins he was seeking to atone for, the public service ministry has been engulfed in a pension scandal in which $71 million has gone missing and three top officials have been found guilty of fraud.

Obong, who was 52 when he died, instructed his wife, Margaret, to place the cash in his steel-lined coffin and that his brother and sister make sure she followed his will to the letter, the paper reported.

His plans went awry on Jan. 7, when members of his clan exhumed his coffin and removed the cash after Obong’s widow confessed to the village’s elders what she had done. The newspaper reported that it is considered a taboo among Obong’s tribe to bury someone with money.

Anglican priest, Rev. Joel Agel Awio told the paper that  no amount of money can buy someone’s way into heaven.

“The price for eternal life is the blood of Jesus. If you want your sins to be forgiven, do it when you are still alive,” he was quoted as saying.

Woman Charged with Framing Hubby’s Ex in Bizarre “Rape Fantasy” Plot

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Angela Diaz (left) is charged with framing her husband’s ex, Michelle Hadley in a terrifying ‘rape fantasy’ plot

SANTA ANA, California — The wife of a California U.S. Marshal has been charged with a sinister plot to frame her husband’s ex-fiancee for unleashing a terrifying campaign of harassment that included soliciting a dangerous rape fantasy, authorities said.

The ex, Michelle Hadley, was charged last summer with 10 felony counts in the nefarious scheme and had faced up to life in prison. But in a bizarre twist Monday, prosecutors admitted they had gotten it wrong and dropped the case against her. Instead, they charged Angela Diaz, the initial victim, with concocting the whole thing.

“Ms. Hadley is an innocent victim of a diabolical scheme,” Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said. He said investigators were not sure what Diaz’s motive was.

The two women were brought together by having both been involved with the same man — who prosecutors identified only as John Doe, but the Los Angeles Times reported was a U.S. Marshal.

Authorities say they do not believe he was involved in the scheme.

Hadley had been engaged to him, but the two broke it off in August 2015. In January the following year, the man met Diaz on a dating website and the two were married and living together a month later. In May, Diaz said she was pregnant with twins.

In June, Diaz went to police in Anaheim, California to report that she had been getting harassing emails from Hadley, threatening to have her raped. The most chilling accusation she made was that Hadley had posted online solicitations in Diaz’s name inviting men to engage with her in”rape fantasies.” The ads included her photo and address and inviting men to have sex with her even if she screamed or resisted.

Bolstering the claim, police intercepted two men near Diaz’s house who believed they were responding to a real ad. In June, Diaz reported fending off a man in her garage, who had torn her blouse in an attempt to rape her.

That day, police arrested Hadley. When she was released the next day on bail, Diaz reported that the harassment continued. Eventually, Hadley was held on $1 million bail and spent several months behind bars.

During the investigation, however, police discovered that Diaz appeared to have committed various acts of fraud, including forging checks forgery, faking cervical cancer, pretending to be an attorney, forging doctor’s notes, faking a pregnancy, and impersonating another one of her husband’s ex-girlfriends over email.

They also increasingly began to believe Hadley’s story that she was innocent.

What had thrown investigators off the scent was that Diaz had used proxy servers to make it look like the email messages were coming from somewhere else. It took months, but eventually police unravelled the case when they were able to track the messages back to Diaz’s home and the home of her father.

Diaz, 31, was arrested last week in Phoenix. For Hadley, finally being exonerated was a huge relief.

“This has been a huge nightmare for me — probably the most traumatic experience of my life,” Hadley, 30, said outside the courthouse on Monday as the case against her was dropped.

 

http://orangecountyda.org/civica/press/display.asp?layout=2&Entry=5054

http://orangecountyda.org/civica/press/display.asp?layout=2&Entry=5055