Courtesy HCSO

Walter Martinez (from left), Christian Perez, Yourdanis Cruz, Lopez-Mendez, Miguel Saavedra, Alex Martinez and Carlos Ventura: Busted.

A group of men were arrested by the Harris County Sheriff's Office for after 29 vehicles were found at a salvage yard in northwest Harris County. The men allegedly brought them to the yard where they swapped the serial numbers. All seven are charged with placing serial numbers with the intent to mask the vehicles' true identity. There was no indication, however, that one of the vehicles was indeed Batman. The crime is a third-degree felony and bail was set at $55,000 for each of the not-so magnificent seven.

As with surprisingly quite a few mugshots, at least a couple of the suspects decided that life wasn't all bad when being booked. Obviously, Miguel Saavedra found something damn funny (or smelled a fart) and Carlos Ventura looks like he was posing for his work ID photo.

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Screengrab from Google Maps of Orange, Texas

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina not only almost destroyed New Orleans and wreaked havoc on the Gulf Coast. The hurricane may also have opened the door for human trafficking for one company, according to lawsuits filed in Texas and Mississippi on Tuesday.

The swathe of destruction Hurricane Katrina cut along the Gulf Coast was a disaster for the history books, but there were also practical concerns to be considered once the storm had passed, like how companies would get enough people to work for them since their employees were scattered in the wake of the storm.

The shipyard company Signal International LLC suddenly didn't have enough hands for the work coming into the shipyards in Orange, Texas and Pascagoula, Mississippi. The company turned to the H-2B temporary worker program to solve the labor crisis, but while they were supposed to be bringing in temporary non-agricultural workers for employment, they were allegedly bringing in Indian workers who were treated as modern indentured servants, according to Daniella Landers, an attorney at Sutherland Asbill and Brennan LLP.

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Most people reading about the killings of Kaufman County officials earlier this year - Mark Hasse, an assistant district attorney was shot on the courthouse steps in January, then District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife were found dead in their home on Easter weekend - responded with the appropriate reactions of horror, concern and flat-out disbelief that things like this could happen in that quiet little county up in North Texas. But some people - namely the criminal types - seem to have had a different response.

Instead of taking the time to ponder what the hell was going on in Kaufman County to make someone go after government officials, it seems some may have looked at the murders - which former Justice of the Peace Eric Williams and his wife Kim were arrested for and charged with - as an excellent idea.

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Harris County Sheriff's Department announced Thursday they had arrested two men and one juvenile accused of beating a pregnant woman after breaking into her home in northwest Harris County. The woman was tied up with tape and beaten. She was taken to the hospital and an emergency C-section was performed. The baby is currently listed in critical condition.

One of the suspects, Hector Ramirez, 19, is allegedly the father of the infant. He, along with Isias Arellano, 19, and a 16-year-old male whose name was not released because he is a juvenile, are charged with aggravated robbery and are in the Harris County Jail.

All three suspects were caught on Wednesday at the scene of the crime in the 16100 block of Keith Harrow in northwest Harris County.

Happy Friday, everybody. Sigh.

Courtesy Harris County Attorneys Office

The apparently famous "Track" outside Ho Motel the Plainfield Inn.

Harris County Attorney Vince Ryan, in conjunction with the Sharpstown Management District, filed suit against the Plainfield Inn off Interstate 59 and Bissonnet on Wednesday. The hotel is known around the country -- it must be because they mentioned that TWICE in the press release -- for its prostitutes who walk "The Track," an area in front of the hotel where they pick up customers.

In addition, Houston Police have responded to more than 400 calls at the motel. Beyond solicitation, the calls included arrests for a variety of violent offenses, robbery and narcotics.

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Why don't people just leave their coke in checked baggage?

In what we're guessing was just a simple misunderstanding, federal prosecutors in Houston have charged a Dominican citizen with importing drugs after he was allegedly caught flying into Bush Intercontinental Airport with 53 pellets of cocaine in his belly.

Mikkail Antonio Nolasco Jimenez, 27, was arrested at the airport Saturday after he boarded a flight from Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, headed for New York.

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Be positive.

We don't know who first came up with the phrase "you can't get good help nowadays," but whoever did likely realized the importance of having a staffer interview someone before hiring.

It's a valuable personnel lesson ingrained in Yevette Lauren Walton and Lakisha Lashell Rogers, but for all their painstaking troubles, they ended up with convictions and likely prison terms.

Then again, when you're interviewing people to see if they will help you defraud the IRS, maybe such outcomes are to be expected.

Walton and Rogers entered guilty pleas today for "conspiring to submit fraudulent tax refund claims in the names of 53 stolen identities during the current 2013 tax season," said the U.S. Attorney's Office and the IRS's Criminal Investigation division.

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Beware the plain brown envelope.

Modern marketing involves aggressively targeting a potential customer and then quickly and efficiently fulfilling his needs.

And when you think of the words "efficiently" and "fulfilling his needs," you think of nothing else but the federal government, right? Right?

Okay, okay -- maybe the feds don't wow you with their customer service when it involves, say, dealing with your flooded house, or an income-tax refund or getting a bill through Congress.

When it comes to selling child porn, though, the feds are killing it. Just ask Sean Louis Walsh, 30, of Houston.

See Also:
- Juan Villarreal: HISD Teacher Arrested on Child-Porn Charges (UPDATED)
- Amber Schmidt: Second Female Metroplex Child Porn Fan This Month
- Misty Reneedawn Wofford: Forced Three-Year-Old to Perform for British Skype Perv, Police Say

Federal investigators identified Walsh as someone running "a 'nudist' Web site," the U.S. Attorney's Office says. That wasn't enough for the feds, so they took action:

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Dereon Kelley: Writes of his innocence to hometown newspaper.

Kids, if you're thinking of getting out of that final you never studied for by phoning in a bomb threat to the school, think again.

Dereon Tayronne Kelley, 22, may not have been trying to miss a test, but he communicated a bomb threat to Texas Southern University Texas State University last October, a federal jury found, and the judge ordered him to prison for 33 months. Almost three years, with three years of close supervision upon his release, for essentially a single bomb threat.

The Bryan man was also ordered to pay a $300 fine and pay $15,548.93 in restitution.

It could have been worse in these post-9/11, post-Boston Marathon days -- he could have gotten ten years. So there's that. Not to mention that he's also been accused of following up his Texas State threat with one to A&M, although he's not been convicted of that.

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It's just like this, right?

The Harris County Sheriff's Office decided to get in the way of working women on their way to a master's in geopolitics by having itself a prostitution sting Tuesday.

This time they weren't after the master's students hookers, they were after the johns.

The operation focused on suspects soliciting sex online. Female undercover deputies advertised as escorts on the internet and arranged for solicitors to meet them at a prearranged location in north Harris County, off of I-45 North and Beltway 8.

Once suspects arrived and made an agreement with the undercover deputies to receive sexual services in exchange for money, they were arrested.

Arrested, if the mugshots are to be believed, were a) Men with strange hair-dos, b) Men in shell shock about what they're gonna tell the little lady about the night's adventure, and c) a guy having the time of his life.

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