Jeffrey Epstein’s former lawyer lobbied Donald Trump to pre-emptively pardon Ghislaine Maxwell during the final days of his presidency after talks with her family.
Alan Dershowitz, 83, a former Harvard Law School professor, represented Epstein during the noughties and Trump during his first impeachment trial. He has since been accused of abuse by one of Epstein’s under-age victims, which he denies.
RCMP anti-corruption investigators say they are probing possible shady practices by several Canadian companies operating in parts of Africa, Eastern Europe and South America.
Firms involved in mining, infrastructure, aviation, rail, engineering and technology are susceptible to corruption, such as paying a bribe to secure a contract, say Mounties with the force’s sensitive and international investigations section.
I can’t wait till those evil doers get a slap on the wrist!
Elizabeth Holmes, the 37-year-old disgraced founder of Theranos, has been convicted of four fraud charges for deceiving investors of $9billion and for bilking thousands of patients with inaccurate and false medical reports.
Holmes, a Stanford University dropout who founded Theranos in 2003 at age 19, duped thousands of patients with bogus claims her biotech startup company could conduct a full range of medical tests using blood from a simple finger prick.
She was convicted of four fraud counts on Monday night, and cleared of four others. Jurors were unable to decide verdicts on the three remaining charges she faced, with prosecutors now able to re-try Holmes on those counts if they wish to.
Very curious about the sentence she will draw.
In the old days, criminals understood if they were caught there would be consequences.
In today’s urban America, if you are a thief, why wouldn’t you smash a glass door or glass display case and grab all the merchandise you could? Seriously, why wouldn’t you? In the old days you wouldn’t because you would be scared that you would get caught.
In the past, “smash and grab” robberies occurred, but it was a very infrequent occurrence. It was rare because thieves understood if they were caught there would be consequences, and even punishment, perish the thought! A criminal would have to raise bail to be released. If not, he would have to spend weeks or even months in the slammer.
NEW YORK, Jan 7 (Reuters) – The possible failure of a juror in Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial to disclose that he was a victim of sexual abuse may not be enough to overturn the British socialite’s sex trafficking conviction and warrant a new trial, legal experts said on Thursday.
Maxwell, 60, was convicted last week on sex trafficking and other charges for recruiting teenage girls to have sexual encounters with Jeffrey Epstein. Her lawyers asked for a new trial after the juror told Reuters and other news outlets that he shared his experience of sexual abuse during deliberations.
The judge in Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking trial asked prosecutors and defense lawyers to brief her on whether a new trial is needed over press comments made by a juror.
MANDEL: Billion-dollar class action wins go-ahead against alleged nationwide bread price-fixing
Millions of Canadian sandwich makers could soon be sharing in a huge pile of dough.
An Ontario judge has given the green light to a class-action lawsuit against the major players in the $40-billion packaged bread market — including Loblaw, Sobeys and Metro — for an alleged 20-year price-fixing scheme. The cartel of manufacturers and grocery chains are accused of colluding to inflate the price of “soft top” sandwich loaves like Wonder Bread and pocketing about $5 billion in ill-gotten gains.
Why is no one in jail for this?
A prosecutor is seeking the death penalty for two people charged with shooting dead a veteran Illinois police officer with her own weapon as she pleaded for her life on the ground and critically wounding her partner, who is now fighting for his life.
Although Illinois isn’t a death penalty state, the U.S. Attorney General can authorize the filing of a petition to seek out the punishment in certain federal murder cases.
In court on Monday, Kankakee County State’s Attorney Jim Rowe painted the picture of a cold-blooded killing that deserved that designation during a bond hearing for Xandria Harris, 26, of Bradley in the county’s Circuit Court.
Ghislaine Maxwell’s conviction on five of six charges of recruiting and grooming teenage girls for sexual encounters with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein is not and should not be the end of the story.
While Maxwell has been held accountable for her actions, the men who engaged in these encounters with underage girls have not, at least not yet. There is speculation Maxwell could strike a bargain with the court for a reduced sentence if she releases the names and possible videos that Epstein shot of some of the men who traveled to his Caribbean island and New York home.
In September 2020, the Toronto Police Department investigating the murders of the two billionaires used terms such as “walking man” and “killer” in their investigation notes, describing the belief that an unknown “man” with an unusual gait was their prime suspect.
As described in the search warrant and production order requests that police made to obtain cell phone tracking data, detectives now had a “working theory.”
“The theory is that investigators believe that both Bernard and Honey Sherman were murdered and that the perpetrator, presumably a man, is referred to as the ‘walking man’ that can be seen on video surveillance” was their prime suspect, one detective wrote in a request to the court for permission to conduct additional analyzes of mobile communications data.
Holmes was unanimously found guilty of three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. She was found not guilty of four more charges and the jury could not reach a decision on three additional fraud charges.
She faces up to 20 years in prison for each charge, though it’s likely they would be served concurrently. A sentencing date hasn’t been given and it’s not clear if she will be placed into custody immediately in the meantime. Court watchers have said it’s likely Holmes will appeal.
The jury weighing fraud charges against Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes told the court it is unable to reach a unanimous verdict on three of the 11 criminal counts she faces, according to a note from the panel read aloud in court on Monday morning.
Jurors in the high-profile Silicon Valley trial had been deliberating for seven days after a trial that chronicled the missteps of the now-defunct blood testing startup. Over the course of 15 weeks, federal prosecutors called 29 witnesses, outlining missteps and alleged fraud Holmes committed during her 15-year reign as CEO.
In response to the note, US district judge Edward Davila gave the jury what is called an Allen charge, encouraging them to deliberate further.
What does crime cost?
Big question, I know. But as we have just finished up one of the worst years for crime in American history, in terms of unexpected and painful growth of various types of crime, it is worth considering the human cost of this epidemic.
We can quote statistics until the cows come home, but eyes glaze over, and the impact may be lost. Numbers and percentages are just figures on spreadsheets and graphs, impersonal and unrelatable.
Naples authorities refuse a public send-off for the convicted murderer known as Lady Camorra
No crowds attended the cortege for Assunta Maresca, better known as Pupetta Maresca, who died at home this week in Castellammare di Stabia aged 86. Maresca, a convicted murderer and mafia boss also known as Lady Camorra, had been the centre of such frenzied media attention in her life that Naples authorities declared she would not have a public send-off.
“We are seeing on social media a glorification of this woman who is a symbol of the Camorra in our neighbourhood,” Francesco Emilio Borrelli, a regional councillor for the Europa Verde party, said in a letter to the Naples police. “The mythologising of bosses is to be avoided at all costs.”
Ghislaine Maxwell has been found guilty of recruiting and trafficking young girls to be sexually abused by the late American financier Jeffrey Epstein.
A US jury convicted her of five out of six charges, but the legal process is not over for Maxwell, 60, who is yet to be sentenced and faces a separate trial for perjury.
