Category: Crime

We first wrote about Joseph Hunter in 2012 when he was arrested for plotting the death of a DEA agent for his drug cartel boss. He was convicted and sentenced to twenty years for that charge in 2016. This week Hunter and two cohorts were found guilty of a contract murder in the Philippines of a real estate broker;

Prosecutors said the 52-year-old Hunter was working as a security chief for weapons and drug trafficker Paul Le Roux when he recruited Samia and Stillwell to travel from their homes in Roxboro, N.C., to the Philippines for what was called “ninja work.” They said Hunter provided firearms and silencers and told them Le Roux would pay them $35,000 a piece to get the job done.

[Adam] Samia, 43, and [Carl David] Stillwell, 50, pretended to be potential clients of the broker. While returning from a trip to the countryside outside of Manila, Samia pulled out a .22-caliber gun and killed the broker by shooting her twice in the face as she sat in the back seat of a van, prosecutors said.

After being paid, her killers were ordered back to the United States, where they were arrested in 2015.

All three are looking at life sentences. We’ve unsuccessfully tried to get a FOIA on Hunter for six years, who everyone claims to be a special forces-qualified-soldier.

The Gainesville Sun reports that former NFL linebacker, Monty Grow, was sentenced in Miami for defrauding the government’s Tricare program of $20 million.

Grow, 46, indicted in 2016 in a Miami federal court, faced a maximum 36-year sentence for 52 charges.

Grow was sentenced to 262 months of imprisonment, or 21 years and eight months, and ordered to pay $18.8 million in restitution.

According to court documents, Grow solicited and received kickbacks, or negotiated bribes, for Tricare beneficiaries who ordered medications between September 2014 and June 2015.

Some of the charges Grow faced included five counts of money laundering, eight counts of health care fraud, conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and 28 counts of receipts and payments of kickbacks in connection with a federal health care program. He was convicted on 17 counts in February.

[…]

Also in February, the court ordered Grow to forfeit property that includes his 2014 Porsche, which was seized in 2016; about $1.7 million from his Bank of America account, and nearly $1 million from his company, MGTEN Marketing Group.

Talk about squandering opportunities, Grow played for the Jacksonville Jaguars and Kansas City Chiefs for two seasons before he decided on a life of crime. I hope it was worth it. Shane Matthews, who played for the NFL for fourteen seasons was sentenced to three months in jail for his role in Grow’s scheme.

Court documents say through MGTEN Marketing Group, Grow received nearly $20 million in kickbacks from Patient Care America, a Broward County compounding pharmacy, in exchange for recruiting and referring patients to the pharmacy who were covered by the Tricare health care insurance program.

In all, Tricare paid about $40 million for the medications for its patients to PCA. PCA, which contracted with Grow, paid him half the reimbursements. Grow kept about $10 million for himself and paid his team of sales representatives the remaining amount, according to court documents.

Earlier this month, 78-year-old homeowner, Richard Osborn-Brooks was awakened by intruders, Henry Vincent and Billy Jeeves. Vincent was armed with a screw driver which Osborn-Brooks managed to wrestle away and he stabbed Vincent with his own weapon. Vincent and Jeeves ran off, but Vincent stumbled and fell where the police found him when they arrived. The cops promptly arrested Osborn-Brooks on suspicion of grievous bodily harm, but those charges turned to murder when Vincent died.

Osborn-Brooks’ neighbors rallied in their support for the retiree, according to the Daily Mail;

‘He’s a nice man, nice to talk to. He’s an old man – it’s a shame really. I hope the law sees sense and let’s him off. I don’t think it’s right.

‘I don’t know his name. I just hope he gets off.

‘One of the police told me it’s definitely him that’s been arrested.’

Adam Lake, who lives near the scene, was also keen to defend his neighbour.

He said: ‘He doesn’t deserve to be punished for defending himself, and the neighbours that I’ve spoken to all agree that the priority needs to be to support him after everything that he’s been through.

‘He was just protecting himself after all.’

Neighbour Clem Williams, who has lived on the road for 20 years also questioned the man’s arrest, asked: ‘Why were the men at his house? The man has a right to defend his home. They should let him go.’

According to the Sun, friends of the dead crook have threatened to take their revenge on Osborn-Brooks;

And now a former acquaintance of dead burglar Henry Vincent says that the late crook, 37, has pals who “won’t rest until they get their revenge” for killing “one of their own”.

They told Mail Online: “I know that Henry Vincent would have killed the pensioner first if he could have got away with it, but they will act like he’s the victim in all of this.

“This poor man and his wife won’t be safe going back into their own home.

“Anything could happen.”

Friends of Vincent erected a shrine to him outside of Osborn-Brooks’ home to which neighbors took offense. One neighbor tore down the shrine;

Relatives of Vincent restored the memorial only to have it removed again, according to the Standard;

Earlier Elvina Lee, who said she was Vincent’s first cousin, called whoever had initially pulled the tributes down “scum” and labelled 78-year-old Mr Osborn-Brooks a “murderer” and a “lowlife”.

She said: “This is the best place for these flowers to be. I don’t know what’s wrong with these people (who dismantled them)… I think they’re scum.”

Regarding Vincent she said: “He was like a brother to me, he loved his family and his three babies. He wasn’t a murderer, he wasn’t a rapist, they’re putting (sic) him as a monster.

“Murderer? The murderer is over there.”

Osborn-Brooks has since been released by police, but him and his wife are in hiding because of the threats. They are unable to return to their home because they defended it from thieves.

According to KABC, Hugo Gonzalez set off two bombs inside a Sam’s Club in Ontario, California.

According to an Ontario Police Department spokesperson, the incident was initially reported at 2:08 p.m. as a structure fire after the caller heard a “popping sound” on aisle 4 of the warehouse store in the 900 block of Milliken Avenue.

Bomb squad personnel later confirmed that two homemade devices were detonated, but there were no injuries or significant damage.

“Each device had ignited small fires to products within close proximity,” the police department said in a statement. “Sam’s Club employees acted quickly and used fire extinguishers to put out the flames.”

According to the Ontario Fire Department’s bomb squad, the devices were set off at opposite ends of the store.

When cops caught up to Hugo, they found more bomb-making material in his car. It’s too bad that aren’t laws forbidding the manufacture of explosive devices so these guys won’t attempt these incidences.

37-year-old Eric Smith, a former NY National Guardsman and a police officer of the New York Police Department was arrested for giving false documents to his landlord claiming that he was stationed on Long Island as a member of the Joint Task Force Empire Shield. Smith was a member of the task force from 2011 to 2014, but after his time was up, he liked the perk about lower rent too much, according to Newsday;

From 2015 through 2017, Smith gave his landlord, Balfour Beatty LLC, forged military orders to continue paying reduced rent at Mitchel Homes in East Meadow, she said.

He is charged with grand larceny in third degree, among other felonies, Singas said in a statement.

“This benefit exists to help armed services members while they are deployed in defense of our county, but this defendant allegedly filed multiple fake orders and stole more than $34,000 in the process,” Singas said.

Smith’s lawyer was not immediately available for comment.

Prosecutors said he could be sentenced to 2 1/3 to 7 years in prison if found guilty of these felonies: grand larceny, criminal possession of a forged instrument and falsifying business records.

Thanks to Raymond for the link.