Some blog items never die. Almost a year ago we wrote about the fraud charges filed against officials of the Fishers of Men Worship Center in Houston. To this day, barely a week goes by without someone throwing up another comment on the case, either defending the officials or saying they got what they deserve. Go ahead, peruse the 200-plus comments if you like. We gave up on it a long time ago.
And the winner in the great Critics vs. Defenders debate is....The Critics!!
The U.S. Attorney's office announced this morning that a trio of church officials entered guilty pleas on their fraud charges.
At the hearing this morning before United States District Judge David
Hittner, Pastor Sheila Diana Washington, 49, and deacon/church treasurer
Tony Overstreet, 44, pleaded guilty to bank fraud arising out of a
student loan fraud scheme. They each face up to 30 years in prison and a
fine of up to $1,000,000 at their sentencing hearing scheduled for Jan.
26, 2010, at 9:15 a.m.
At the same hearing this morning, Pastor Eric
Washington, 56, pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the United
States by having Fishers of Men submit grossly inflated claims for
reimbursement to Harris County for a FEMA-funded program that reimbursed
groups sheltering Hurricane Katrina evacuees during fall 2005.
It only took 15 seconds for the Commissioners Court of Harris County to approve three additional years of participation in 287(g) after hours of public testimony, mostly in opposition, to the program.
The two Houston Garcias, who, by the way, were not included in the Garcia segment of CNN's Latino in America, went toe-to-toe over the county's implementation of a federal program designed to identify and deport undocumented immigrants in the U.S.
"We can back out of the agreement at anytime. And the ICE shows up everyday to pick up people. There's usually not even 24 hours in our facility before they're taken to an ICE facility," said Sheriff Adrian Garcia as he defended his request for approval of the new agreement.
"I know what you all do now under the current agreement but this is if we do the second part of the intergovernmental agreement," commissioner Sylvia Garcia said. "I'm concerned about...these additional responsibilities and...this court should be a part of that process in terms of determining costs."
You know, when the Houston Press names someone the Best Criminal Defense Attorney, we expect that the high honor will result in further good works -- it's the whole Obama-Nobel Prize train of thought.
So it should come as no surprise this morning that recent winner Brian Wice won a slam-dunk victory in a high-profile case, getting the Court of Criminal Appeals -- of Texas, no less -- to vote 9-0 that his client deserved a new hearing on the punishment given her.
The client? Susan Wright, a woman who killed her abusive husband, a woman whose trial featured a prosecutor tying a fellow prosecutor to a bed in the courtroom and then pretending to stab him 200 times.
The CCA, not the world's most sympathetic forum for defendants, agreed that Wright's trial lawyer had rendered what they call "ineffective assistance of counsel" during her case. By, for instance, not stopping the farcical melodrama staged by prosecutors.
To Houston realtor Kay Staley, religion and organized government mix about as well as tequila and jagermeister. That is to say, not very well. And so she has launched a federal lawsuit against the City of Houston and city council member Anne Clutterbuck in an attempt to sever the two incompatibles, asking the courts to keep prayer out of city council meetings.
Six years ago, Staley sued Harris County to get rid of a Bible displayed on a courthouse monument, claiming it was a constitutional violation. After three long-fought years in court, she prevailed and the Bible was removed.
Now she's turned her attention on city council meetings.
According to Staley's lawsuit, council members and religious folks who are sometimes invited to the meetings belt out a prayer at the beginning of each weekly session. In turn, claims Staley, she is "offended by the City's and individual Councilmember's promotion of religions."
It was the morning of October 18, 2007, and three Iraqis were taking a cab from the city of Erbil to Sulaimaniya in northern Iraq, near the border with Iran. About halfway through the journey, at about 10:30 a.m., the taxi passed through the village of Kara Hanjir, when the road started to slope upward.
Suddenly, the passengers in the cab felt the sting of gunfire. Members of a British security firm, Erinys International, were shooting at them, and without provocation or warning. At least according to a lawsuit recently filed against the company in Houston federal court.
As the passengers -- Sangar Mohamed, Arazw Qader, and Zirag Qader -- sat helplessly in the cab, the security forces "unloaded a hail of bullets toward the taxi," it says in the lawsuit. The cab driver, Hadi Amin, was familiar with the warning signals used by private security soldiers to slow or stop traffic, but claims no such signals were given.
Amin stopped the taxi when he heard gunfire, the lawsuit states, and bullets and shrapnel sliced into the cab, injuring its occupants. Afterward, according to the lawsuit, the security team just drove off without a word or offering to help the people in the cab.
Episcopalians going to today's noon service at Christ Church Episcopal Cathedral can expect to be harassed by those dang folks from the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP). Network co-founder and president Barbara Blaine is in town to drum up awareness over the November 3 trial involving three former Austin Episcopal boarding school students who say the Episcopal Diocese of Texas covered up sexual abuse they allegedly suffered at the hands of now-defrocked priest James Tucker.
Specifically, Blaine is outraged by what appears to be the diocese's insistence to settle and seal the case. Blaine, who herself is a victim of a priest's abuse, says it's crucial that victims not be forced to keep any part of their experiences in the dark.
"They shouldn't have to keep any secrets....the victims speaking out is a gift to the church," Blaine told Hair Balls. "We kept our secrets for years, and that's how so many of our perpetrators got to more kids....Tucker was only stopped after kids started telling."
We wrote this summer about Continental Airlines' decision to sue some of its pilots who, the company thought, had undergone bogus divorces in order to get some pension benefits.
The pilots were still in love, the airline essentially argued, and therefore shouldn't be getting the early pensions that come with divorce (and what kind of anti-marriage stance is that, Continental?)
A federal judge here ruled against the airline today, saying that no one knows what is in another's heart. Or something like that.
Steven Mitby, one of the Houston lawyers representing some of the pilots, was pleased.
"The Court's decision is a complete victory for the pilots and their families," he said. "The judge rightly held that ERISA, the federal statute governing pensions, does not authorize corporate human resources departments to second-guess the validity of lawful family court divorce judgments."
If your house reeks of gas and the gas man tells you not to worry, don't trust the gas man.
At least that's the lesson Mary and Joe Rocha claim they learned the hard way in a recent lawsuit filed against CenterPoint in Harris County District Court.
It was a little more than a year and a half ago when the Rochas called a CenterPoint repair man out to their home on Aguila Street just outside the 610 Loop to fix the pilot light in their water heater. When the worker arrived, he turned on the gas, but he couldn't get the pilot lit. After a while, the Rochas claim, the repair man seemed frustrated and appeared to be in a hurry, but finally did get the pilot to ignite. But not before the home filled with the smell of gas. (How a house filled with gas didn't ignite when he got the pilot-light lit is not explained in the suit, but sounds damn lucky.)
According to the lawsuit, when asked about the smell, the CenterPoint
worker told the Rochas to just leave their windows open for a few hours
and the odor would dissipate and everything would be okay. The Rochas
did just that leaving their windows open for about five hours. But
when they closed them back up, the smell returned. And their luck didn't.
Michael Sadowski, a 51-year-old League City resident, was charged with possession of child pornography today and held without bond, the U.S. Attorney's office announced.
Sadowski set up a correspondence with the owner of a kiddie porn website who, darn the luck, turned out to be a federal agent.
But even if Sadowski was leery, you can hardly blame him for going through with the transaction: The feds were offering bargain-basement prices. Just fifteen bucks got a video that featured "prepubescent and pubescent girls engaging in oral sex, masturbation and other sexual activity," the U.S. Attorney's office said.
Really, who could resist those prices? We mean who, of course, besides someone who would be utterly repulsed at how sick a human being he had become. Sadowski ordered seven.
All Jorge Gonzalez of Houston wanted was a safe place to keep his meager earnings. But in this era of banking scandals and swindles, that was apparently too much to ask. Instead, Gonzalez became the lead plaintiff in a sweeping class action lawsuit against Bank of America, AIG and several other companies.
Gonzalez, who was born in Mexico and speaks little English, claims that he, along with thousands of other Hispanics, was the victim of a predatory scheme by B of A and the others to steal his money right out of his bank account. The case was filed in Houston federal court.
"We thought about this case very deeply," says Gonzalez's lawyer, Kenneth Wynne, "and frankly we care about it every bit as deeply. We think something isn't right here and really needs to be made right."
According to the lawsuit, here's how the alleged scam works:
We've written several items about Jamie Leigh Jones, the local woman who is suing KBR over a gang-rape she says happened while she was working for the company in Iraq.
The company put up roadblocks to her attempts to resolve the situation and her claims of rampant sexual harassment in KBR camps, but the federal courts have allowed her lawsuit to proceed.
As part of the most recent appropriations act for the Defense Department, Senator Al Franken attached an amendment that would, according to the official Senate site,
prohibit the use of funds for any Federal contract with Halliburton Company, KBR, Inc., any of their subsidiaries or affiliates, or any other contracting party if such contractor or a subcontractor at any tier under such contract requires that employees or independent contractors sign mandatory arbitration clauses regarding certain claims.
In other words, companies must allow rape victims to have their day in court. Pretty straightforward, and who would be against it?
James Patton of Houston is headed to court next week, on charges that he had his way with dead female bodies.
As DA spokeswoman Donna Hawkins told KHOU about pictures found on Patton's computer: "I can tell you that the defendant's male sexual organ was seen in various poses with those of dead bodies." Other media reports mention Patton's penis being photographed near a corpse's foot.
Really? This guy pictured up above? He doesn't look creepy at all.
Unless, by "creepy," you mean "The guy who looks most likely to abuse female corpses." In that case, yeah, you've got a point -- he does look kinda creepy.
But how does he stack up with classic creepy guys?
Harris County is seeing a big spike in domestic-violence cases this year, District Attorney Patricia Lykos' office announced today. They also announced they've taken a variety of steps to handle it.
Jane Waters, chief of the DA's Family Criminal Law Division, reported that 4,900 family violence charges were filed as of Oct. 1. "That pace of filings is 18 percent above last year, and 40 percent more than in 2007," the DAs office said. "Significant increases also have been recorded in the number of protective order applications and cases involving violations of protective orders."
Waters said the increase may be attributed in part to new initiatives and assistance programs by the DA and cops "to help make the process more sensitive to victims' needs.
"We have noticed that the comfort level of victims reporting crimes has increased, leading to additional charges and enhanced prosecutions," Waters said. "It takes courage to get law enforcement involved for the first time. If that experience is a satisfactory one, then the victim will call again and encourage friends in similar situations to get help. Enhanced reporting of crimes can save lives."
This summer we told you about two locals who had not only been accused of defrauding the federal government, but something far, far more powerful: Oprah Winfrey.
Sisters Darlene McGruder Poole and Lashone McGruder Victor were charged in August with filing false information to FEMA in order to get rent money after already receiving houses from Oprah's Angel Network.
Today they pled guilty in a Houston federal court "to conspiring to defraud FEMA of more than $14,000 in connection with Hurricane Katrina," as the U.S. Attorney's office put it.
The two will be sentenced in January and face up to 20 years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine.
The DOJ announced a similar case resulted in another guilty plea today from Angela Payne, also known as Angela McKinnies:
Payne also purchased a home on Angel Lane through the
same charitable programs and she similarly submitted bogus rental
receipts in order to fraudulently obtain nearly $10,000 in additional
disaster assistance from FEMA. Prior to making her fraudulent
submissions to FEMA, Payne received more than $16,000 in legitimate
disaster assistance as a result of being displaced from New Orleans by
Katrina.
Michael Moore's new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, expectedly serves
up a quick and dirty glimpse at the consequences of unfettered
corporate corruption and exploitation. But the most disturbing story
of corporate greed in the film, unfortunately, comes right from our own backyard.
Houston widow Irma Johnson makes her silver-screen debut when Moore
interviews her about a "dead peasant" insurance policy Amegy Bank took out on her
husband while he was an employee.
As Hair Balls explained in June, Johnson only found out about the policy because a check was accidentally forwarded to her instead of the bank after his death.
We followed up with Johnson's attorney, Mike Myers, of McClanahan Myers Espey, to see if Moore's film portrayed an accurate picture of the case.
"It's accurate but it didn't go into much detail about how outrageous it is that the policies were purchased after Amegy found out [Johnson] had brain cancer," he said.
According to Myers, Moore left out the fact that Amegy purchased two "dead peasant" insurance policies in 2001, totaling more than $4 million, after Johnson had already undergone two brain surgeries and was undergoing chemotherapy.
And that's not the worst.
Houston's Randy Quaid, the pride of Bellaire High and UH, was recently arrested, along with his wife, in Marfa for allegedly walking out on a $10,000 hotel bill.
It was one more example of some odd behavior by the couple -- talk of their actions during the recent Broadway bomb Lone Star Lovestill comes up among the theater crowd.
Both Quaids profess their innocence of the hotel-bill charges (check out their handwritten statement to TMZ here), but however the case shakes out, one thing is clear: Randy is one celebrity who knows how to make a damn mugshot.
The Unibomber beard doesn't often get combined with an insouciant Sinatra-like toss of the suit jacket over the shoulder, but Quaid pulls it off easily here. Add the cheerful cackle, and the wife who looks like a recruit the Manson Family rejected for being too scary, and you have a mugshot that easily can stand up to the best.
Reporters with Al-Jazeera were in Houston earlier this month filming around the city and in the Harris County Jail -- getting some people riled up -- to "examine the criminalization of the mentally ill." The 22-minute news story was released last week, and while it was well-made and informative, the story doesn't offer much new information to anyone that follows the criminal justice system in Texas. Basically, the Harris County Jail is a bad place, especially if you're mentally ill.
But the Al-Jazeera reporters also hit on something ironic about Houston, something the Houston Press wrote about in "How to Save a Life," a cover story from December of last year. The city is home to a jail that is one of the worst places for the mentally ill in the nation, but the police department has the largest and one of the most progressive programs in the country that deals with that same population.
"We are much more professional in our response, in that we realize jail is not the answer," Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt told Al-Jazeera.
It seems like those giant government contractors working in war zones are always getting into trouble. Or at least getting sued.
Over the last year or so, Hair Balls has brought you stories about Halliburton/KBR workers being accused in court of rape, running and encouraging employees to visit a Thai brothel, and exposing military personnel to contaminated food, water, and improperly incinerated human remains. One man even claims he saw a wild dog running around base with someone's arm in its mouth.
Today, we bring you a new twist on an old theme: medical-records fraud.
This time, the target of a lawsuit in Fort Bend district court is Fluor, a Texas-based corporation that describes itself as a "FORTUNE 500 company that delivers engineering, procurement, construction, maintenance ... and project management to governments and clients in diverse industries around the world."
A former Halliburton/KBR worker who claims she was gang-raped in her bedroom by co-workers in Iraq is one step closer to getting her day in court, thanks to a favorable ruling by a panel of three federal judges in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
In a 2-1 ruling, the judges decided that the allegations made by Jamie Leigh Jones of Houston were not subject to the arbitration clause in her employment contract, meaning Jones' civil lawsuit against Halliburton, KBR and affiliates can proceed in court to a possible trial. The primary question before the court was whether the alleged rape and Jones' other claims were related to her employment and whether the alleged attack took place at an official workplace.
Jones started working for Halliburton/KBR as an administrative assistant in Houston in 2004. She claims that she was sexually harassed and demanded to be transferred. On July 25, 2005, she began an assignment at Camp Hope, located in the Green Zone area of Baghdad. Despite requesting to be housed in an all-female barracks, she was placed in quarters occupied predominantly by men.
If you're the owner of a Houston strip club that's slated to reopen Thursday, probably the last thing you want to see are media reports that the club may actually be controlled by an ex-Mafia boss (and alleged admitted murderer) who's in the witness-protection program.
On Monday, the New York Daily News reported that "mob rat" Vincent Palermo is the real man in charge at the Galleria-area Penthouse Club, which is planning to reopen Thursday after the City of Houston successfully sued to shut it down for a year. This was followed by the first of a two-part KPRC story on Palermo.
The city sued to shutter the club after undercover officers made a series of prostitution and drug-related arrests, city attorney Don Cheatham told Hair Balls.
"[Sexually oriented businesses] tend to produce certain types of criminal activity. In the Penthouse case, we had about ten cases of prostitution that were made in there, and about an equal number of drug cases that were made....We offered that as proof in the civil trial, and that's why we got an injunction against their operation," he said.
That injunction, Cheatham said, also stated that the property does not qualify for a sexually oriented business permit under current city ordinance.
Jeff Stoller, head of global licensing for the Penthouse Club franchise, told KPRC that the club will not be a sexually oriented business, as defined by the ordinance. But when Hair Balls tried to ask Stoller why anybody would pay strip club prices when they wouldn't get the full strip club experience, Stoller said he was no longer commenting.
Charles Roberts -- aka Alabama, aka Hell Boy (according to a lawsuit he filed from prison) -- was recently transferred to Huntsville from Edinburg after he claimed, via lawsuit, that the prison didn't allow him to practice his Wiccan religion.
Michelle Lyons, the director of public information for the state's prison system, told Hair Balls, "He was not moved to Huntsville for any reason related to the lawsuit." She added that the Lopez Unit in Edinburg, where Roberts stayed for about two years, is more of a short-term facility.
It is an interesting coincidence, though, and it'd be really interesting if Huntsville just happened to have a few practicing Wiccans. Lyons wasn't sure if it did, but she said there are Wiccans at a state prison near Sugar Land. (Update: Lyons said there are five Wiccans in Roberts' new unit.)
The effort by some Houston police officers to wear beards on the job (and off the job, too, we guess) was dealt a setback when a federal judge threw their lawsuit out of court.
HPD brass trumpeted the decision by U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal in a press release in which chief Harold Hurtt said the judge's "decision will enable the Houston Police Department to continue to equip officers so they can safely do their jobs of protecting the public at all times."
Hurtt and HPD had argued that beards would interfere with wearing gas masks and other equipment used against chemical attacks. Some of the cops said that they had skin conditions which were aggravated by shaving.
Said the department:
The court accepted evidence from the Houston Police Department, the manufacturer of the masks, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) that a police officer with facial hair (i.e. beard) cannot safely wear the masks. Therefore, any police officer with a skin condition that temporarily or permanently prevents shaving will not be allowed to work in certain uniform assignments like SWAT, Special Response Group, Crime Scene Unit and/or any "call for service" assignment in the department.
Still, we can't help but think things might have turned out differently.
A man with the unlikely name of Dong Dang Huynh got some bad news this morning: He was sentenced to 22 years in a federal prison. Oh, and he also has to forfeit $24 million in ill-gotten gains.
Why? He didn't file the proper paperwork for all the money he was moving around to finance an ecstasy-importing ring. Man, a simple paperwork oversight like that and he gets 22 years? One of his office managers must be in real trouble. You just can't good help nowadays.
Huynh (that's how the feds are spelling it; we're asking for confirmation) was convicted earlier this year of "conspiring to commit money laundering concealment, eight counts of violating the money laundering spending statute and for failing to file Currency Transaction Reports," the U.S. Attorney's office says.
He would move huge amounts of money about, to Canada and California, and then send it to Vietnam disguised as funds being sent back home by ex-pats.
Mohammed Zakaria Memon just wanted to wash up. To just splash a little water over his face, hands, head and feet before a quick prayer five times a day in accordance with his Muslim religion.
But no. That was too much for the folks at Wal-Mart and Deloitte Consulting. Instead, they canned Memon.
That's according to a lawsuit Memon recently filed against his former employer, Deloitte, and his client, Wal-Mart, in Houston federal court. Memon, a 59-year-old Pakistani-American from Fort Bend who had a $140,000 a year job as a Lead Consultant, claims his civil rights were violated when he was fired for exercising his religious right to pray and clean himself beforehand in a ritual known as "Wazu."
"It's very unfortunate that this happened," Memon's lawyer, Ali Ahmed, tells Hair Balls.
According to the lawsuit, Deloitte assigned Memon to a consulting project at Wal-Mart's corporate office in Bentonville, Arkansas in November 2007. Memon claims he would wash up in the restroom before going to pray in an area designated by Wal-Mart, such as the parking lot or in a hallway. The whole process took about five minutes or so.
Back in July we told you about a Saudi national who had been arrested for lying on a visa application; his lie was that he told authorities he would be bringing in a woman to work for him around the house eight hours a day for $1,300 a month.
Instead the feds say, he worked her for 14 hours a day, seven days a week with no days off, and kinda paid her when he felt like it, which wasn't often. During the six years the woman worked for Mohammed Abbulazz Al-Zehairi, she should have been paid more than $150,000; instead she received $11,000.
Why didn't she leave? Al-Zehairi kept her passport locked up in a closet. Eventually the woman got word out of her plight, and authorities began an investigation.
Today Al-Zehairi pled guilty and was sentenced, and...it wasn't an overly impressive sentence.
The Examiner website reports that U.S. District Judge Sim Lake tossed most of the claims Kawaljeet Kaur Tagore had made under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Tagore had said her religion required her to wear the four-inch dagger. The IRS had different thoughts about dagger-wielding agents, even if the daggers were small.
Lake didn't dismiss the entire suit, just some claims under specific laws, and some defendants. Tagore can still proceed with a suit against Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
A couple of months ago we brought you the sad tale of the dwindling jaguarundi, and how an environmental group was suing the U.S. Department of the Interior demanding that the agency create a conservation and survival plan for the endangered cat from South Texas.
Now that same environmental group is trying to save six types of freshwater mollusk that also call Texas their home.
Mollusks, you say? They're not nearly as cute as the jaguarundi. Who gives a hoot about them?
Well, it turns out that mollusks, also known as mussels, improve water
quality by removing bacteria and algae, which keeps the rivers nice and
healthy. And WilldEarth Guardians, a nonprofit organization, thinks
that's pretty damn important. The group is suing the Department of the
Interior in Houston federal court to make the agency formally decide
whether or not six types of mussels should be on the endangered species
list.
Anyone who likes child porn has obviously got mental problems, but usually they're not completely idiotic -- after all, they have to find a way to indulge their sickness without being caught by the feds.
And then there's 22-year-old Josiah Samuel Stevens on Conroe.
He just got five years in prison for possession of child porn. How did the feds discover him? Because -- and we are shaking our heads as we write this -- the dude included child porn in his online submission to become Paris Hilton's best friend.
White courtesy phone for the Idiot Patrol, please. Idiot Patrol, white courtesy phone.
Let's examine this through the cold language of the U.S. Attorney's office:
The San Antonio punk band Girl in a Coma, whose members were arrested after an altercation at Chances in Montrose this spring, have been no-billed by a grand jury and will face no charges from the incident, their lawyer tells Hair Balls.
Kent Schaffer says two of the members appeared before a grand jury Friday, told their side of the story -- which involves some in-fighting between group members and participation by off-duty HPD cops working security -- and the case was dismissed.
"There were six different witnesses; some who knew who the band was and some who didn't," Schaffer says. "We also showed pictures of the bruises all over one of the girls, from head to toe pretty much."
Schaffer says the group is considering filing a civil suit against the club; he hopes they do.
Baytown police have filed charges against one of the "men" who pull idiotic phone pranks such as making people drink urine or having them break windows in hotels. They do this by convincing the listeners they are talking to officials of some sort, and some kind of emergency action must be taken.
On July 5, one of the pranksters, Shawn Powell, called an Arby's in Baytown, where he lives, and convinced an employee to activate the restaurant's fire-control system, loosing a hell of a lot of foam.
Powell, who is also a convicted sex offender, was contacted by Baytown police who read about him in the epic Smoking Gun story that exposed the identities of many of the "Pranknet" gang, discovering they were losers, some living with their moms. (Read the story; these guys are truly bullies.)
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