Justice Department

October 14, 2009 -- WASHINGTON -- The United States has reached a settlement with ranchers in a longstanding dispute over livestock trespasses on public lands in Nye and Esmeralda Counties, Nev., the Justice Department and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced today.

As part of the settlement, Benjamin J. Colvin and Colvin Cattle Company acknowledged past unauthorized grazing on federal government lands and agreed to comply with federal grazing laws and regulations in the future.    » read more »

October 14, 2009 -- WASHINGTON — U.S. Senator Carl Levin, D-Mich., issued the following statement today on the IRS announcement of preliminary results from its offshore bank account voluntary disclosure program. Levin is chairman of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which has investigated tax haven abuse for the last decade.    » read more »

October 8, 2009 -- “The PATRIOT Act reauthorization bill passed by the Judiciary Committee today falls far short of adequately protecting the rights of innocent Americans. Among the most significant problems is the failure to include an improved standard for Section 215 orders, even though a Republican controlled Judiciary Committee unanimously supported including the same standard in 2005.    » read more »

Funds for New Police Officers, Combating Violence Against Women and Fighting Internet Crimes Against Children Included in Act

February 17, 2009 -- WASHINGTON — Today President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (H.R.1), which includes $4 billion in Department of Justice grant funding to enhance state, local, and tribal law enforcement efforts, including the hiring of new police officers, to combat violence against women, and to fight internet crimes against children, the Department of Justice announced.    » read more »

February 10, 2009 -- WASHINGTON - A 24-count indictment charging five individuals with various crimes arising from an alleged scheme to defraud investors through the manipulation of the publicly traded stocks of three companies was unsealed today in Tulsa, Okla., announced Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division Rita M. Glavin and U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Oklahoma David E. O’Meilia.

The indictment, returned by a federal grand jury in Tulsa on Jan. 15, 2009, alleges the scheme reaped the defendants in excess of $41 million.    » read more »

Twentieth Member of Casino-cheating Criminal Enterprise Pleads Guilty to Racketeering Conspiracy Targeting Casinos in the United States and Canada

January 22, 2009 -- WASHINGTON – Phat Ngoc Tran, 35, pleaded guilty today in San Diego to conspiring to participate in a racketeering enterprise, the "Tran Organization," in a scheme to cheat at least 12 casinos across the United States and Canada out of millions of dollars, Acting Assistant Attorney General Rita M. Glavin of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Karen P. Hewitt for the Southern District of California announced today. Tran admitted that he and his co-conspirators unlawfully obtained up to $2.5 million during card cheats.    » read more »

WASHINGTON, Friday, July 18, 2008 -- Jesus Perez-Laguna, a citizen of Mexico, was sentenced today in federal court in Columbia, S.C., on charges stemming from a sex trafficking ring involving at least one teenage girl. Perez-Laguna was sentenced to over 14 years imprisonment and ordered to pay $52,500 in restitution to his victims. After his release from prison, Perez-Laguna will be on federal supervised release for the rest of his life.

As a condition of supervised release, U.S. District Judge Joseph F. Anderson ordered that Perez-Laguna be surrendered to immigration officials for deportation proceedings and further ordered that Perez-Laguna not return to the United States while on supervised release.    » read more »

WASHINGTON, Friday, July 18, 2008 — The Department of Justice announced today that it has filed a complaint in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan against the City of Ecorse, Mich., alleging that the city discriminated against two women formerly employed in the city clerk’s office by subjecting them to sexual harassment by their supervisor that created a hostile work environment.    » read more »

Boston, Mass., June 23, 2008 -- The pharmaceutical company Pfizer Inc. has agreed to pay a $975,000 civil penalty to resolve alleged violations of the Clean Air Act at its former manufacturing plant in Groton, Conn., the Justice Department and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today. Today’s settlement is the first of its type in federal court under regulations that are designed to control the emissions of hazardous air pollutants from pharmaceutical manufacturing operations.    » read more »

May 20, 2008 -- SAN DIEGO -- California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. today released the results of an investigation into allegations of “a corrupt course of action” that San Diego City Attorney Mike Aguirre leveled against San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders. The department concludes that the record does not support the allegations made by the city attorney against the mayor.

Sunroad Centrum building, San Diego: Photo by Jamie Lantzy (CC)    » read more »

May 20, 2008 -- WASHINGTON – Senator Carl Levin, D-Mich., today released the following statement regarding the report released by the Department of Justice Inspector General entitled “A review of the FBI’s involvement in and Observations of Detainee Interrogations in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq.”

Bush protesters, March 2007: Photo by Andrew Ciscel (CC)

“Some have suggested that the abuse of detainees in U.S. custody was simply the result of a few bad apples acting on their own. The report released today by the Department of Justice Inspector General is proof that that is simply not true.    » read more »

April 17, 2008 -- (Washington, DC)- Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) and Committee Members Linda Sánchez (D-CA), Artur Davis (D-AL), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) announced three critical actions in the Committee's investigation into allegations of selective or poltiically-motivated prosecution in the Justice Department.

Karl Rove protesters: Photo by Ted Swedenburg (CC)    » read more »

Montana man’s history of committing sexual assaults on minors spans more than 25 years

WASHINGTON, FRIDAY, MARCH 28, 2008 – A child sex offender with multiple prior convictions for offenses against children has been sentenced to life in prison on both counts for which he was convicted, to run concurrently, Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division and Timothy J. Fuhrman, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Salt Lake City Division, announced today.    » read more »

Falsely Told Customers He Could Provide a Defense to Criminal Tax Charges

WASHINGTON, FRIDAY, MARCH 28, 2008 – A California-based tax scam promoter, Steven Hempfling, has been permanently barred by a federal court in Fresno, Calif., from selling a tax fraud scheme that falsely claims to give customers a legal defense against criminal prosecutions for income tax evasion, the Justice Department announced today.

In selling the scheme, Hempfling falsely advised customers that the federal income tax is invalid because the 16th Amendment to the Constitution was never ratified. For many years, federal courts have repeatedly held that such claims are legally frivolous and imposed fines and other sanctions against those who continue to assert them.    » read more »

Tax Preparer Allegedly Fabricated Education Credits & Various Deductions to Secure Fraudulent Refunds for Customers

WASHINGTON, FRIDAY, MARCH 28, 2008 – Lilia A. Gomez of Hialeah, Fla., was barred by a federal court today from preparing federal income tax returns for others. Gomez operated tax return preparation businesses under the names Tax Prep Inc., 1 Tax Prep Inc. and TFD Services Inc. Judge Patricia Seitz of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida issued the permanent injunction order against Gomez and her businesses. Gomez consented to the court order.    » read more »