Find Your Daily Voice
53°
Tag: US Attorney's Office
NY Man Who Assaulted Female Passenger On Flight To Newark Gets 2 Years, No Parole
UPDATE: An upstate New York man who admitted assaulting a fellow passenger on a flight from Denver to Newark must spend two plea-bargained years in federal prison.
Ryan Manuella, 30, of Erie County, “moved to a vacant center seat next to a female passenger, who was sitting in a window seat” on the April 16, 2021 flight, U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger said.
Manuella, who didn't know the woman, then "touched the passenger without her consent," Sellinger said.
"The victim then yelled at him and left the row of seats," the U.S. attorney said.
Defense attorney Andrew Olesnyck…
Carjacking, Kidnapping, Rape: Multi-State Crime Spree Stretched Into PA, Feds Say
Four Delaware men are accused in a crime spree that stretched into Pennsylvania and allegedly included car theft, kidnapping, gunpoint robbery, and rape.
Twenty-four-year-old Tonnaire McNair-Matthews, 23-year-old David Hinson, 21-year-old Michael Caldwell, and 20-year-old Mahkiya Powell were each named in a July 13 indictment unsealed in a US District Court in Delaware this week, said the US Attorney's Office.
The spree, federal authorities say, took place on April 14 and began in Delaware. Investigators claim the four suspects were riding around in a stolen …
Jury Finds Lehigh Valley Man Guilty Of Cyberstalking Government Worker, Ex-GF, Ex-Wife
A jury found a Lehigh Valley man guilty of cyberstalking three different victims, including a government worker, his ex-girlfriend, and his ex-wife, authorities announced.
A five-day trial in Easton led to a jury finding Anthony Elonis, 39, of Bethlehem, guilty of three separate counts of cyberstalking on Friday, August 5, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Elonis was indicted by a Philadelphia grand jury in July after allegedly cyberstalking three victims between 2018 and 2021, the office said.
The victims included a government employee in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Elonis’ forme…
4 Convicted In PA Sex Trafficking Ring 'The Sevens'
Four members of a sex trafficking ring that ran out of a boarding house in southeastern Pennsylvania have been convicted, federal authorities said.
Shaquile Newson, 29, Alexander Malave, 31, Karvarise Person, 33, and James Goode, 47, were convicted on multiple charges, including conspiracy to participate in a racketeering enterprise and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors, the US Attorney’s Office said.
Federal investigators linked the quartet to "The Sevens," a "violent gang" that operated out of a 50-room boarding house on South 4th Street in Reading, t…
Owners Of Popular Philly Cheesesteak Joint Plead Guilty In Tax Fraud Scheme
The owners of a popular Philadelphia cheesesteak joint pleaded guilty Monday, May 9 to federal charges in a tax fraud scheme, authorities said.
Anthony Lucidonio, Sr., 84, of Philadelphia, and Nicholas Lucidonio, 56, of New Jersey, the owners of Tony Luke’s on Oregon Avenue were accused of hiding more than $8 million from the IRS for around a decade, according to the US Attorney's Office.
Federal prosecutors say the father-son duo did this by paying their employees in cash to avoid withholding payroll taxes between 2006 and 2016. The pair were indicted in 2020.
The pros…
Nationwide Hotel Chain's Corporate Credit Chief From NJ Admits Embezzling $300,000
A New Jersey employee who ran the company’s corporate credit card program for a nationwide hotel chain admitted embezzling $300,000, federal authorities said.
Marco Alvarez, 46, of Bloomfield, admitted that he “knowingly opened and used corporate credit cards to make $317,582 in unauthorized personal purchases” from April 2014 through January 2020, U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger said.
Alvarez, who worked as a senior analyst for strategic sourcing, tried to hide the thefts by “transferring credits owed to the hotel to these credit cards to offset the unauthorized charges made,” Sellinger …
$150M Bank Fraud: NJ Landlord Gets 8 Years, No Parole In Federal Prison
A Teaneck landlord must spend the next eight years in federal prison -- without parole -- for orchestrating a $150 million bank and securities fraud scheme.
Seth Levine, 53, was the founding partner, owner, and managing member of Norse Holdings, the parent company to more than 70 subsidiaries, U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger said.
Each of the subsidiary companies owned one or more multifamily buildings, mostly in New Jersey, he said.
Beginning in 2009, Levine directed a scheme for nearly a decade to fraudulently refinance the multifamily properties by lying on refinancing appli…
Career Criminal, 73, Admits Committing Murder-For-Hire Of NJ Politico
A hardened ex-con from Connecticut admitted that he and a longtime criminal pal from Philadelphia stabbed a political consultant to death and then torched his Jersey City apartment in a murder-for-hire attack.
George Bratsenis, 73, of Monroe, CT said he and his partner were paid to whack Michael Galdieri, the son of former State Sen. James Galdieri (D-Jersey City) and a prominent figure in local Hudson County politics.
Bratsenis and the other killer, Bomani Africa, 61, were hired by onetime political operative Sean Caddle, who’d been an aide to former State Sen. Ray Lesniak (D-Elizabeth) a…
Convicted NJ Child Porn Trafficker Gets 20+ Years In Fed Pen, No Parole, For Enticing Minors
A convicted child porn trafficker from Union County must spend no fewer than 20 years in federal prison for doing it again while soliciting two children to "engage in sexually explicit conduct online," authorities said.
Christopher Gardiner, 39, of Cranford, must serve out just about all of the plea-bargained 20 years and eight months that he was sentenced to on Tuesday, Feb. 8, because there's no parole in the federal prison system.
Gardiner, who'd been convicted of similar charges in Union County in 2007, conducted an "ongoing sexually graphic conversation on a web-based social media appl…
NJ Brothers Admit Cheating Gov't In $3M E-Commerce Postage Scam
Two brothers who co-owned a Bergen County e-commerce company admitted short-changing the government by more than $3 million in postage by altering hundreds of thousands of labels intended for envelopes and slapping them on outbound packages.
Jack Koch, 44, of Elmwood Park, and Steven Koch, 43, of Pompton Lakes, owned Fresh N Clear, a high-volume business that sold various household items online that were shipped o customers via the Postal Service, federal authorities said.
Over the course of several months in 2020, the company bought 240,471 USPS Priority Mail postage labels, “almost all fo…
NJ Ring That Dealt Fentanyl, Crack Smashed By Federal, County, Local Crime-Fighting Team
Eleven accused members of a drug ring that authorities said openly peddled crack and potentially fatal fentanyl in a Newark neighborhood were charged federally on Wednesday.
The ring's "primary supplier," Frazier Burton, 46, was caught with 100 bricks of heroin and fentanyl when tactical officers arrested him Wednesday morning, Acting U.S. Attorney Rachael A. Honig said.
At 50 bags per brick, that's 5,000 individual packages -- all of which Honig said carried the neighborhood drug network's particular stamps.
The case took several months for an ad hoc team of local, county and federal inve…
3 NJ Officers Indicted Federally For Assaulting Handcuffed Suspect, 16
One former and two current Ewing Township police officers surrendered to federal agents on Friday after they were indicted on civil rights charges following a recorded assault on a handcuffed juvenile nearly four years ago, authorities said Friday.
Current Officers Matthew Przemieniecki, 43, of Hamilton and Justin Ubry, 33, of Burlington and retired Lt. Michael Delahanty, 51, of Robbinsville all used "unreasonable and excessive" force in the Jan. 5, 2018 incident, Acting U.S. Attorney Rachael A. Honig said.
Officers who pursued the 16-year-old boy after he stole a car and then crashed a car…
NJ Federal Juror Who Did His Own Research Fined $11,227 For Causing Mistrial
A New Jersey federal juror was fined $11,227 for researching the case and sharing what he found with other jurors, causing a mistrial, authorities said Tuesday.
Jurors in the trial “were instructed repeatedly, both in writing and verbally, not to conduct any research about the case, including through use of the Internet,” Acting U.S. Attorney Rachael A. Honig said.
However, Juror Number 7 – as he was identified – “conducted Internet research into evidence in the case” during a recess and then shared his findings with the other jurors during deliberations, causing a mistrial,” Honig said.
U…
