The feds arrested Michael Williams, 39,, a former Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officer on charges that he tried to smuggle methamphetamine through Los Angeles International Airport in exchange for a total of $8,000 in cash.  In 2020, authorities conducted undercover operations inv...

Maggie Fleming, Humboldt County District Attorney, told OC Watch that she has “notified DA Spitzer that I am withdrawing my endorsement.”  Ms. Fleming is the sixth California District Attorney to rescind an endorsement of Spitzer, and her decision comes on the heels of a recently surfaced video w...

          A federal judge sentenced Malik Lamont Powell, 21, and Khai McGhee, 18, a.k.a. “Cameron Smith,” to 144 months in federal prison for committing an armed robbery last year on the crowded patio of a Beverly Hills restaurant in which one customer had a gun held to his head while the robbers...

The Ninth Circuit held that trial  counsel's  investigation, preparation, and execution of their  chosen insanity  defense  fell  below  an  objective standard  of  reasonableness. The Ninth Circuit wrote that  (1)  trial counsel's most  significant  error  was failing  to  call  as a witness—or ...

   A federal judge sentenced Michael Joseph Pepe, 68, a retired Marine Corps captain who traveled to Cambodia in 2005 to engage in illicit sexual conduct with minors to 210 years in federal prison.  He has been in federal custody since 2007. During a seven-day trial in August 2021, jurors heard t...

    A federal judge sentenced Sam Sarkis Solakyan, 40, the CEO of several Southern California-based medical imaging companies, to 60 months in federal prison for running a scheme that submitted more than $250 million in fraudulent claims through the California Workers' Compensation System for med...

             The feds arrested Richard Royden Chamberlin, 53, who allegedly fired BB guns at the Planned Parenthood facility in Pasadena several times. The feds charged him with being an ex-felon with the illegal possession of a .22-caliber handgun. Chamberlin allegedly shot at Planned Parent fac...

           Geoffrey Eldridge Hull, a Baldwin Hills man pleaded guilty to wire fraud.  He conned people all over the U.S. into giving him their high-end and exotic cars with bogus promises he would find other people to take over their car leases. From April 2016 to November 2019, Hull marketed him...

    Thomas H. Peters, 55, the former head of the Los Angeles City Attorney's Civil Litigation Branch from February 2014 to March 2019, will plead guilty to a federal charge for threatening to fire a plaintiffs' attorney from a lucrative special counsel job with the city unless the attorney paid a...

          Eduardo Moreno, 45,, a train engineer at the Port of Los Angeles pleaded guilty to a federal criminal charge for running a locomotive at full speed off the end of railroad tracks near a United States Navy hospital ship that was deployed to provide medical relief during the early months ...

          Michael Godfree, 80, pleaded guilty to defrauding more than 100 investors out of $8.3 million through a scheme that sold “ancient slag.” For those who don't know, “ancient slag is a mining waste byproduct that supposedly contained precious metals.          From 2011 to November 2017, Go...

           David F. Alexander, a former Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) executive, will guilty to a federal criminal charge for lying to the FBI about a lucrative job offer he secretly solicited and agreed to accept in exchange for providing “guarantees” of additional LADWP cont...

          David H. Wright, 62, the former general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) will plead guilty to a federal criminal charge for accepting bribes from a lawyer in exchange for his official action to secure a three-year, $30 million no-bid LADWP contract for th...

          Paul O. Paradis, 58, a New York City lawyer, who represented both the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) and a ratepayer suing it will plead guilty to a bribery charge for accepting an illegal payment of $2.2 million for getting another attorney to supposedly represent hi...

A federal judge sentenced Adam Joiner, 43, of  Manhattan beach to 97 months in federal prison for defrauding Asian investment firms out of $14 million by falsely claiming the he would use the money to produce a feature film distributed by Netflix.  Then , while out on bond, he illegally sold the ...

          Albert Pinedo, 78, a former school teacher who served five years in federal prison in 2003 for distributing child pornography, got 120 months in federal prison for trying to entice a minor to engage in sexual activity over the internet. On July 23, 2021, a federal jury found Pinedo guil...

          A federal judge sentenced Dr. Amir Friedman, 56, a Calabasas physician to 14 months in federal prison for accepting about $800,000 in bribes and kickbacks as part of a conspiracy that unlawfully billed health insurers for compounded medication prescriptions.          Friedman pleaded gu...

Politician Allegedly Sought Generous Benefits for Close Relative in Exchange for His Support of County Contracts that Benefited University's Social Work School     See if you can follow this:           The feds indicted longtime politician Mark Ridley-Thomas and the former dean of the School of S...

The San Luis Obispo County Jail violates the rights of prisoners by, among other things, failing to provide adequate medical care and subjecting some prisoners to excessive uses of force, according to a Justice Department report that calls upon the jail to make changes to address the constitution...

           A federal judge sentenced a former music teacher,  John Edward Zeretzke, 62, who contracted with several schools to teach music to children, to 183 months in federal prison for producing child pornography.  Eretzke pleaded guilty in August 2020 to one count of production of child porno...

          A federal grand jury this afternoon indicted  John Mathew Piecuch, 61 with sexual exploitation offenses alleging he convinced a preteen girl to send him sexually explicit photos of herself and a younger relative. Piecuch was named in a three-count indictment that charges him with attemp...

RIVERSIDE, California – A federal grand jury indicted John Mathew Piecuch, 61, of  sexual exploitation offenses alleging he convinced a preteen girl to send him sexually explicit photos of herself and a younger relative. Piecuch was indicted with attempted enticement of a minor to engage in crimi...

            A federal jury this afternoon convicted  Mark Steven Domingo, 28, for attempting to bomb a rally in Long Beach for the purpose of causing mass casualties. The jury found him guilty of providing material support to terrorism and attempting to use of a weapon of mass destruction.He face...

The feds charged Matthew Taylor Coleman, 40, with foreign murder of United States Nationals for taking his 2-year-old boy and 10-month-old girl to Mexico and killing them. on Monday. A federal criminal complaint filed today charges Coleman with foreign murder of United States nationals. On Saturd...

        A federal judge sentenced Patrick Joseph Soria, 35, to 152 months in federal prison for orchestrating a real estate fraud scheme that victimized more than 2,000 homeowners, involved fraudulent filings that affected the title to properties across the country and caused more than $7 million...