Articles Posted in Federal Crimes

Last Thursday, 19-year-old Jacksonville resident Shelton Thomas Bell was indicted on charges of conspiring and attempting to provide material support to terrorists. Bell had previously journeyed to the Middle East where his desire for self-radicalization strengthened.

Similarly, Tamerlan Tsarnaev travelled to the Russian Federation provinces of Chechnya and Dagestan, in transit to the amplification of his radicalization. Tsarnaev was a Kyrgyzstan national.

According to National Public Radio, more than twenty Somali-American youths disappeared from their homes in Minnesota during the past year. It is believed by the FBI that the young men were recruited here in the U.S. then radicalized, and sent to Somalia. The fear is that they’ll eventually return to the United States to carry out attacks planned overseas.

In a Mar. 10 House Homeland Security Committee probe regarding the growing problem of radicalization within American Muslim communities, Melvin Bledsoe spoke about his son Carlos. Bledsoe went on the record, telling committee members of the personality changes his son underwent.

More and more cases of once benign young American Muslims undergoing changes of radical ideologies and planning to carry out terrorist acts in the U.S. have been dominating the current news headlines.

The now deceased Boston Marathon bomber prepared for the April 15 bombing attacks near the finish line of the Boston Marathon with at least some of his training allegedly acquired on foreign soil. His younger brother, Dzhokhar, a naturalized US citizen was greatly influenced by him.

Tamerlan spent more than half of last year interacting with militant individuals and groups which may have included a person labeled “Russia’s Bin Laden,” Dokka Umarov. In the 1990’s until 2011, Umarov led terrorist death squads in Chechnya until the United Nations finally characterized him a terrorist, affiliated with Al Qaeda.

Carlos Bledsoe is charged with murdering an Army private at a recruiting post located in Little Rock, Arkansas. His father testified in front of the House Homeland Security Committee saying that his son let his beloved pet dog go loose and removed pictures of Martin Luther King from the wall in his room. Up until the onset of this metamorphosis, King was his hero. He attributes what he considered strange behavior of his son’s temperament to be the launch of his alteration to a practice of radical Islam. Carlos, who was supposedly attending college in Nashville, TN, had become a follower of a radicalized mosque there, according to his father. “Carlos was captured by people best described as hunters; he was manipulated and lied to.”

According to authorities, Carlos took the new name, Abdulhakim Muhammed and in due course became the shooter in the attack of an Army recruiting post. He was enraged that U.S. troops were killing Muslims in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bledsoe Sr. said he was testifying to apologize to his son’s victims and to prevent other families from having to go through comparable pain. He pressed Congress to act. “God help us, God help us,” he said. “This is a big elephant in the room, and our society continues not to see it,” he said. “Our children are in danger. Our country must stand up and do something about the problem. Tomorrow it could be your son, your daughter.”
According to authorities, this latest indictment demonstrates how Bell was organizing to fight in a foreign holy war that he and other local Jacksonville youths had trained for while in quest of assistance from well-known overseas terrorists. If convicted, the charge of conspiring and attempting to provide material support to terrorists holds a maximum penalty of 15 years in federal prison for each one of the two charges.

Bell was being detained at the Duval County Jail in Jacksonville on a number of state charges, including two counts of organized fraud, grand theft, and knowingly and intentionally participating in a motor vehicle crash at the time the new indictment was publicized He was originally arrested on January 29.

A Jacksonville-based terrorism task force made up of state, local and federal organizations uncovered the conspiracy, and it may have been the accounts of some members of a local Islamic Center that helped piece it together for the Federal Agency.

Bell roused suspicions at the Islamic Center in Jacksonville last year due to exchanges he was having with other teens who attended the center, including conversations regarding jihad as well as the ongoing civil war in Syria, according to Parvez Ahmed, the board secretary at the Florida Islamic Center.

According to Ahmed, some parents of young members came to the leadership of the Center with worries based on what was told to them by their children. The Center’s attorneys alerted the FBI. Federal agents then visited the Center on several occasions to interview the administrators and other members.

“We felt he was having conversations with younger kids that concerned us … about violence and things like that,” Ahmed said.

Bell is also suspect of using his training to orchestrate a July 4 night “mission” in which he and other youths outfitted in dark clothes, wore gloves and masks, wrapped their footwear in tape and damaged various religious sculptures at the Chapel Hills Memory Gardens cemetery close by to where he lived last year. Designed for a recruiting video, he allegedly recorded the activity at the cemetery which is located on St. Johns Bluff Road North.

Ahmed stated that it was believed that Bell was going through a fascination phase with Islam.

Previous to the incident, in late September Bell who lived just to the west of Jacksonville flew with another juvenile from Jacksonville to New York to Poland to Israel. Upon arrival in Israel they were denied entrance and turned away. The reasons are unclear why the two were not allowed into the Country.

They then resumed their travels arriving in Jordan on Sept. 28 flying via Poland and then through Turkey. At that point the two contacted an unnamed person who supposedly knew of their plan and had the ability to expedite their transport to their final destination of Yemen, according to the indictment. It’s uncertain if either Bell or the juvenile arrived at their endpoint.

In November, Bell returned to Jacksonville. In the indictment the whereabouts of the juvenile was not indicated at the time of Bell’s return.

In an interview by the Times-Union a woman identifying herself as Bell’s mother told the publication that Shelton had converted to Islam and that he also had been abroad, but she didn’t further elaborate. She insisted that although he’s been indicted, it doesn’t make the allegations true. Other than that, she had no further comments.

Overall, the indictment accuses Bell of flying to the Arabian Peninsula and then meeting with members of Ansar Al-Sharia which is a pseudo name for al-Qaida, to commit acts of violence which he termed a “jihad.” The Ansar Al-Sharia terrorist group has taken credit for numerous assaults on Yemeni forces which include a May 2012 suicide bombing during a parade that killed in excess of 100 soldiers.

Bell and one or two other juveniles are also suspected of training with firearms on July 4 and July 10. The latter exercise was recorded to be shown to others as a training video, the indictment showed.

In the Boston case, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev wrote a note which was left in the boat he was hiding in, while he was being hunted by the police. It indicated that the bombings were reprisals for U.S. military action in the Afghanistan and Iraqi wars. He also called the Boston victims “collateral damage” in the same way that Muslims have been the same in the American-directed wars. “When you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims,” he said.

He also said that he didn’t grieve for his brother Tamerlan, writing that by that point, Tamerlan was a martyr in paradise, and that he anticipated that he would join him there shortly.

Bell referred to this training as “practicing jihad “, and identified his real target as “not the American people, just the flag and the government”, the indictment said.

To read the latest FBI press release regarding the Bell indictment, click here

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DNA evidence and power tools assisted federal authorities in linking Amed Villa who was charged with his participation in a theft that has been termed the biggest in the State of Connecticut’s history. Mr. Villa is a Cuban National who presently lives in Miami, Florida
Villa was arrested in Florida last May; charged with theft and conspiracy for his role in a related heist.

An indictment states that on January 24, 2010, Mr. Villa seized more than 3,500 cases of cigarettes, from a warehouse which was estimated to be worth more than $8 million. The warehouse was operated by Federal Warehouse in Tazewell County, Illinois. But apparently, Mr. Villa’s cravings were not satisfied with a meager $8 million heist.

The March 2010 robbery of an Eli Lilly warehouse located in Enfield, Connecticut, in close proximity to a residential shopping mall yielded a bounty of approximately $90 million in stolen pharmaceuticals to Mr. Villa along with his brother Amaury and their affiliated cohorts in crime. The prescription drugs that were stolen included antidepressants, including Prozac and Cymbalta, the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa, as well as Gemzar, a chemotherapy drug used in the treatment of lung cancer, according to this latest indictment. The drugs were recovered from a Doral, Florida storage facility in October 2011.

The targeted building in Connecticut, which is normally closed on weekends, had no security staff or even a protective perimeter fence to guard the substantial inventory of pharmaceuticals that were held there pending shipment. However, there was a surveillance camera that picked up the ill-defined image of two men who drove up to the loading dock in a tractor-trailer, then got out of the vehicle and made their way to the exterior of the main office where they seemingly glanced through the windows, apparently checking if there was anyone on premises.

“It appears as a very sophisticated, well-planned criminal action,” said Ed Sagebiel, a spokesman for Eli Lilly. He said the monetary figure represented the wholesale value of the stolen pills.

The actual robbery played out like an elaborate scene from the movie “Mission Impossible”.

After months of reconnaissance of the warehouse, on the evening of March 13, 2010, using a ladder, the brothers scaled the walls of the facility and then using power tools, cut a hole in the inadequately reinforced roof to gain access. Using ropes to descend into the building they were able to rappel down and disable the alarm system. Once inside the building, using available forklifts, they loaded pallets containing the drugs into waiting semi-trucks stationed outside the building at the loading docks, over the next five hours. This is where their co-conspirators were waiting, primed to drive down to Florida where the stolen product was planned to be stored and then sold.

But as shrewd as the two brothers and their co-conspirators seemed to be, law enforcement documents demonstrate that they left an ample trail of evidence behind.

When the Enfield, Connecticut Police arrived at the crime scene they came across DNA evidence that traced back to a previous warehouse robbery that took place in Illinois. That warehouse job fit the same modus operandi as the Eli Lilly break-in. In both cases, a hole was cut through the roof and the security system was disabled. Analysis of a water bottle that was recovered from the floor inside the warehouse of the Illinois theft matched the DNA profile which was consistent with the sample which was found in Enfield; both of Amed Villa.

The same DNA also matched that of an individual’s that was found on a coffee cup from a GlaxoSmithKline warehouse break-in in Chesterfield, Virginia, the scene of an earlier $6 million pharmaceutical heist.

Similarly lying in plain view was an assortment of several hand tools and a variety of power tools. In the Connecticut robbery the tools were “Husky” brand which are sold solely at Home Depot outlets, leading investigators to speculate if everything may have possibly been purchased in the same sale in regard to the Lily theft. Law enforcement then began a search of Home Depot’s computer records to see if they could connect the assortment of eight implements to the ones recovered in the Lily break-in, and see if the tools in question had ever been sold together at one of their stores.

The results quickly hit pay dirt.

In the past year that particular combination had only occurred one time, at a store located in Flushing, N.Y at 1:13 p.m. just one day before the Lily theft took place.

Store surveillance cameras showed two men appearing to be the Villa brothers on the checkout line and then paying at the register for the $757 purchase in cash. They were again viewed on video in the parking lot as they placed the purchased articles into the back of a rented SUV. The SUV was identified as an Infiniti QX56 which was found to have been rented by Amaury Villa.

On May 03, 2012 Amaury Villa was charged in an 18-count indictment along with eleven other South Florida men for their connection in the Connecticut burglary. He pleaded not guilty to this particular charge after pleading guilty the previous year to possessing drugs stolen from the warehouse in Florida. He has been sentenced to more than 11 years in prison.

On July 1, his brother Amed pleaded guilty to the $8 million cigarette robbery as well as the Connecticut Warehouse break-in; to the charges of two counts of theft from an interstate shipment and one count of conspiracy to commit theft from an interstate shipment. When sentenced, Amed Villa faces a penalty of not more than 25 years in federal prison.

“Today’s guilty plea is the result of a most exhaustive and far-reaching investigation, highlighted by exemplary teamwork among our federal, state and local partners,” commented Kimberly K. Mertz, the FBI Special Agent in Charge of the investigation. “Complex investigations involving multiple agencies and jurisdictions are often difficult because they require an especially organized and coordinated effort in order to bring those responsible for crimes to justice. The tremendous investigative and prosecutive effort in this matter is evident by Villa’s guilty plea.”

Acting United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, Deirdre M. Daly and Ms. Mertz made the announcement.

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A three-year investigation initiated by multiple law enforcement agencies has been paying off with the arrests of groups of individuals who have been accused of their involvement in insurance fraud schemes.

These frauds were devised by the staging of automobile accidents. The investigation acquired its name in part because one of the methods of causing the apparent damage was achieved by smashing target vehicles with actual sledgehammers. The fraud was perpetrated in part by chiropractic clinics and massage therapists that worked there.

Late last month, in federal court four people pleaded guilty to the staging of some of these accidents and subsequently making fabricated insurance reimbursement requests through claims instituted by their clinics.

Maria Testa Baceiro, 29, and Luis Ivan Hernandez, 40 owned and operated the chiropractic clinics and Olinda Rodriguez, 39, and Iris Roca, 41, were the licensed massage therapists who worked there.

According to prosecutors, between October 2006 and December 2012 Baceiro and Hernandez billed insurance companies and were paid for the prepared claims that were either non-necessary or not rendered at all. They recruited people with chiropractic licenses or other types of medical licenses to pose as what were termed “nominee owners” of numerous clinics that partook in the illicit arrangement. A total of twenty-one clinics were involved in the scheme.

They also recruited people to initiate automobile accidents as well as those that would pose as the victims of the accidents. These parties were referred to as the Perro and the Perra. The Perro was known as the person who triggered the accident and the Perra was the person or persons who were the casualties’ resultant of the accident. Or in other words the victim whose car was smashed into.

It was charged that participants of these accidents were directed by their recruiters to go to chiropractic clinics that were controlled by co-defendants, according to court documents. The participants involved in the staged accidents then deceitfully finalized paperwork, proclaiming injuries that were sustained during the accidents. It was also alleged that the so called injured individuals involved were coached how to fill out the documentation and what answers to give to insurance investigators if they were questioned about the nature of their injuries or asked about any treatments they received.

Court documents also demonstrated that the staged accident participants were also advised to sign blank treatment forms that would be submitted at a later time, which specified that they had visited the clinic on frequent occasions for treatment, in spite of the detail that at the time they may have only physically have gone to the clinic once or twice.

Summing up and exemplifying these circumstances, under the Florida personal injury protection (PIP) law which was adopted in 1972 a driver’s insurance company is mandated to pay up to $10,000 to cover the costs of medical bills and lost wages after an accident, no matter who is at fault. This law was passed to make sure that anyone injured in a car accident would swiftly receive money to address their medical expenses.

As an example of the law, if a person who has 3 others in his car runs into another automobile holding 3 other persons, the insurance company could be responsible to pay out up to $80,000 based on the total of 8 persons being involved in the crash.

At the plea hearing in federal court both Baceiro and Hernandez pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud, twenty-seven counts of mail fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Hernandez also pled guilty to twenty-one counts of money laundering and Baceiro pled guilty to twenty counts of the same charge.

Rodriguez and Roca, both licensed massage therapists both pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud. They were charged in separate accusations for their involvement in the deceptively staged car accidents.

Maximum statutory sentences of twenty years for each of the following charges apply: Each count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to commit mail fraud, substantive mail fraud, and substantive money laundering.

Reimbursements to the victimized insurance companies are mandatory, for all deceptively acquired funds.

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Money laundering is a legal term describing a process of disguising the origins of proceeds obtained by illegal activity to appear to have been derived from a legitimate source.

Some of the methods used to achieve these means can be extensive as is the case in this article. The fact that the original method that was used was so involved, time consuming and costly is what ultimately led to the arrest and warrants for its participants, according to prosecutors.

It was a precedent setting event when Miami prosecutors charged Oscar L. Sanchez, 47, the owner of a check-cashing store located in Naples Florida, with the laundering of millions of dollars which found its way to Cuba relating to a Medicare money laundering ring last summer. The case was the first of its kind where authorities were able to connect swindled healthcare proceeds originating in the United States moving into Cuba’s state-controlled banking system
Earlier this month, without any apparent uproar, the convicted money launderer was sentenced by a Miami federal judge to a prison term of 4 and one half years. The terms of his sentence will also include serving one additional year of home detention after his release as well as his surrender of approximately a half-million dollars in assets to the government. He will also have to complete 1,600 hours of community service. His prison sentence is set to begin on June 15 upon his voluntary surrender.

Sanchez’s original sentence was reduced by U.S. District Judge Paul Huck by 40 percent based on prosecutor Ron Davidson’s suggestion that he assisted authorities in bringing money-laundering and Medicare fraud charges against three other accused accomplices.

A Cuban-born U.S. citizen, Sanchez was indicted on a single conspiracy charge of performing a central role in laundering the proceeds of seventy medical facilities based in South Florida who were deceptively billing the Medicare system for almost $375 million and received in excess of $70 million. He was personally held blamable for about $10 million of that laundered total when he pleaded guilty in late August of last year.

During his interrogation, it became evident that Sanchez was only a small player in a much larger operation and not the architect, as was first believed after his arrest.

Through Sanchez’s cooperation, the prosecution disclosed that he admitted that he worked together with a so called currency exchange entrepreneur who allegedly played the principal role in the scheme. He then exposed an offshore company by name of Caribbean Transfers. This turned out to be the company that bankrolled the intricate money-laundering organization that relocated more than $30 million in pilfered Medicare payments that originated in South Florida and was moved into Cuban banks.

Acting on Sanchez’s information, prosecutors filed conspiracy charges against Jorge Emilio Perez, the creator of Caribbean Transfers, and two South Florida men, Felipe Ruiz and Kirian Vega. They were both charged with laundering Medicare payments through Sanchez, who did business with the company founded by Perez. Perez is presently at large.

Ruiz, 38, owned two medical equipment businesses in Miami; incorporated under other persons’ names. He was recently denied bail because a judge believed him to be a flight risk and was afraid he would take flight to Cuba or another country of close proximity in the Caribbean.

Vega, 35, who was the owner of a Miami pharmacy has already pleaded guilty to the charge and has been sentenced to three years in prison. The ownership of Vega’s pharmacy which also sold medical supplies was similarly listed under another person’s name.

Prosecutor Davidson said during Ruiz’s bond hearing back in October, “They used Oscar Sanchez as a middle man.”

The Prosecutor dubbed Caribbean Transfers as an illegal sort of “Western Union” for monetary transfers. Their website says that it focuses in remittance services to the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and other countries in the Caribbean.

The FBI along with agents from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Federal Health and Human Services department which investigated the Sanchez case, suspect that Perez, the mastermind of the illicit enterprise is currently hiding in the Dominican Republic.

According to court records as part of the money-laundering complex, Sanchez worked together with Perez and his companions who worked at Caribbean Transfers. The business organized shell companies that had bank accounts in Trinidad and Canada. Hindered by U.S. limitations on transmittals from the U.S. to Cuba, Caribbean Transfers, sought to transport millions of dollars to the Island nation.

They had purchased in excess of twenty cartons of money orders, transporting them in amounts of less than $10,000 which enabled them to avoid declaring their actual source. U.S. law requires that any transfer in excess of $10,000 being brought in or out of the country be declared on a customs form. According to court records the company used various aliases when conducting business, one of them being Bill Clinton.
As previously mentioned this was an involved, time consuming and costly operation with many countries and persons involved until Sanchez became a part of it, making it a much easier entity to operate.

As written in court documentation, Davidson wrote “Benefitting both sides of the transactions, [Sanchez] was a financier for fraudsters and a capitalist for the Cuban banks,”
Sanchez received a percentage of 1 to 1.5 percent for matching up the two parties. One of them, headed by Caribbean Transfers delivered millions of dollars in available cash which were then produced by Cuban exiles’ remittances to the Medicare fraud ringleaders.

Records display that those alleged lawbreakers, subsequently, wired money, drawn from their South Florida commercial bank accounts or sent checks to the other’s shell companies in Canada. Those dirtied proceeds were then conveyed by Caribbean Transfers as settlements to Cubans living on the island. A shell company is a company that exists but does not actually do any business or have any assets.

“Through this process, [Perez] and his associates successfully moved millions of dollars of cash from the United States to Cuba without detection by U.S. law enforcement,” wrote Davidson.
Davidson along with fellow prosecutor Eloisa Delgado Fernandez worked on the case that led to the arrests and convictions.

To read the FBI press release dealing with this article click here

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An Orlando, Florida man who has been linked to Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the alleged mastermind of the recent Boston Marathon bombing was shot to death as he was preparing to sign a confession dealing with an unrelated crime that occurred in Waltham, Massachusetts 2 years ago.

Ibragim Todashev, a 27 year old Chechen immigrant made a succession of incriminating declarations to the FBI in regard to a triple homicide that took place in Waltham in 2011. The incident took place as he was being interrogated for his possible involvement in the Boston bombings that injured in excess of two hundred, sixty people and killed three. More than a few of Todashev’s friends relayed to the Orlando Sentinel that the FBI had been following Ibragim since two days after the Boston attack which occurred on April 15, and had been questioning him in regard to the bombings, but his former roommate Khusen Taramov said that the FBI was questioning Todashev about a conversation he had with Tamerlan Tsarnaev at least a month before the bombings transpired.

During questioning by two Massachusetts state troopers with the FBI present, Todashev was said to incriminate himself in a triple homicide where three men were discovered dead inside an apartment with their throats slashed. Marijuana was found spattered all over the dead bodies.

Brendan Mess, 25, one of the victims of the horrific crime, was previously described by Tamerlan Tsarnaev as his “best friend” according to the owner of the gym where he and Mess, who were both training as boxers, worked out, as reported in The Boston Globe. The other two victims of the murders were Erik Weissman, 31, and Raphael Teken, 37.

Officials said that not only did he implicate himself in the killings but he went on to say that Tsarnaev was also involved in the triple murder. Two other spokespersons who were also informed of the investigation told the Associated Press that authorities believe Todashev had more than a minor connection with the older Tsarnaev brother.

Todashev’s shooting and subsequent death occurred when he was in the process of signing the confession admitting to his part in the triple homicide. The Washington Times reported that he became agitated and lunged at the FBI representative who was present at the scene before he was shot by the agent.

According to The Associated Press as relayed by law enforcement officials, it was not clear if Todashev was equipped with a knife when he leapt at the FBI agent. However, it was known that he was a mixed martial arts expert that potentially sets his abilities for causing bodily damage at a level much higher than that of the average individual.

In a statement obtained by FoxNews.com FBI Agent Dave Couvertier said “The agent, along with other law enforcement personnel, were interviewing an individual in connection with the Boston Marathon bombing investigation when a violent confrontation was initiated by the subject… During the confrontation, the individual was killed and the agent sustained non-life-threatening injuries. As this incident is under review, we have no further details at this time.”

As might be expected, one of his friends had only positive things to say when asked about him. One of them, Saeed Dunkaev was quoted as saying “He’s a regular guy, nothing wrong,” However, another friend, and former roommate, Muslin Chapkhanov, admitted that Todashev knew the older Tsarnaev brother. He “was living in Boston and I think he trained with him,” Chapkhanov said.

Todashev did in fact live in Watertown, Mass., last year according to public records. For the past year he’d been living with other Chechen immigrants in the immediate area, specifically the town of Kissimmee, until he moved to the greater Orlando area during the past year.

Todashev was known by police in both Florida and Massachusetts to have a fierce temper. He was arrested in Boston in 2010 in an incident classified as road rage. Recently, he was involved in in a fight with a father and son over a parking space. For that episode he was arrested on a charge of aggravated battery. However, he was released on $3,500 bail.
The FBI has now sent a review team from Washington to investigate the shooting and death of Todashev. They will question witnesses who were at the condo where the shooting took place, including the two Massachusetts State Police officers that were interviewing him along with other law enforcement officials. To date, the FBI agent who fired the deadly shot has not been identified to the public but is known to be from the FBI’s Boston division.

You can read the FBI’s latest press release by clicking here

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