Julia Davis

On Dec. 23, 2014 at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn, New York, United States Congressman Michael Grimm pleaded guilty to aiding and assisting in the preparation of a false tax return. He is refusing to resign his seat after pleading guilty to the felony tax charge. After his court appearance, Grimm said: “I’m going to get back to work and work as hard as I can.” Grimm is a former undercover FBI agent, who has served as a member of the United States House of Representatives, representing New York’s 11th Congressional District since 2011. Grimm made the headlines in January 2014, when he threatened to "break" a reporter in half and throw him off a balcony for asking questions about a fundraising investigation for Grimm’s 2010 campaign. In September 2014, Congressman’s former girlfriend, Diana Durand, pleaded guilty to funneling illegal campaign contributions to Grimm in a straw-donor scheme. Continue reading:  http://www.examiner.com/article/congressman-michael-grim...

The FBI describes this case as “one of the more outrageous prison plots the FBI has investigated in recent memory.” An Ohio inmate—and the clinical psychologist who was in love with him—were indicted and charged with threatening a murder witness, along with three other accomplices. “I’ve seen a lot of creative inmates trying to get released,” said Special Agent Eric Rardain , who investigated the case out of the FBI’s Philadelphia Field Office, “but never in my 22 years of law enforcement have I seen anyone go to this extreme.” On October 16, 2014, the FBI announced that Nicholas Stanishia, 44, an Ohio prison inmate, clinical psychologist Marcia J. Weber, 46, of Loveland, Ohio, Martin Jay Wilson, 43, of Kansas City, Missouri, Jody Six, 40, an Ohio prison inmate and Anthony Vaughn, 41, an Ohio prison inmate were indicted by a federal grand jury and charged with an interstate conspiracy to transmit threats to a witness. Continue reading:  http://www.examiner.com/article/inmate...

On November 17, 2014, Heather Elizabeth Coffman, 29 of Henrico County, Virginia, made her first appearance in U.S. District Court in Richmond. She is charged with making a false statement regarding an offense involving international or domestic terrorism. According to an affidavit filed by an FBI agent,  Coffman promoted ISIS on several Facebook accounts she maintained under various aliases. Court documents also accuse her of offering to help an undercover FBI agent connect with the terrorist group in Syria. When she was questioned by the authorities, Coffman lied, denying that she engaged in these activities. Mark Henry Schmidt, Coffman’s defense attorney, said that his client was born and raised in the United States, lived with her parents and cared for her 7-year-old child. He seemed to blame the case on “Facebook going badly.” The FBI’s investigation of Coffman commenced when agents took note of her Facebook postings and sought search warrants to access her various account...

In an elaborate ruse, FBI agents went undercover at a Las Vegas casino to catch members of an alleged sports betting ring in July 2014. The ring was allegedly headed by 50-year-old Malaysian millionaire and gambling guru Paul Phua. The FBI’s deceptive incursion into a high-roller suite inside Caesars Palace hotel was videotaped from the lapel of one of the agents. The video was recently released by the Associated Press. To gain entry to Phua’s hotel room, the FBI cut off his Internet access, then posed as computer repairmen called in to fix the blackout. Once inside, the agents looked at Phua’s computers, claiming they saw evidence of illegal betting. One of the FBI agents in the video says: "I got the URL for the site they were wagering on." The FBI later returned with a search warrant. They arrested Phua, his son and six others, accusing them of taking millions of dollars in bets on the World Cup. Continue reading:  http://www.examiner.com/article/fbi-agents-cut-off-i...

The Department of Justice announced that on October 17, 2014 two Connecticut men pleaded guilty to bribery charges , admitting that they participated in a scheme to obtain confidential, internal law enforcement documents and information from a former Special Agent with the FBI in White Plains, New York. Johannes Thaler, 51 and Rizve Ahmed, aka “Caesar,” 35, admitted to bribing Robert Lustyik, who was at the time serving as a Special Agent with the FBI’s counterintelligence squad. According to the guilty plea, between September 2011 and March 2012, Thaler and Lustyik solicited bribes from Ahmed. In return for the bribes, Lustyik promised to provide internal law enforcement documents and other confidential information to Ahmed. Ahmed, a native of Bangladesh, wanted to access confidential law enforcement information, including a Suspicious Activity Report, pertaining to a Bangladeshi political figure who was affiliated with a political party opposing Ahmed’s views. Ahmed admitted that he...

On October 16, 2014, Akba Jihad Jordan, 22 pleaded guilty to conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, planning to travel overseas “ for purposes of violent jihad .” Jordan, along with his accomplice and co-defendant, Avin Marsalis Brown, were planning to fight side by side with terrorist groups in Yemen and Syria. Brown and Jordan engaged in numerous discussions with an FBI confidential source, expressing their fervent desire to travel overseas to fight the “kuffar” (non-Muslims) and “munafiq” (Muslims considered to be hypocrites). They were willing to join groups such as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS), and jabhat al-Nusrah (JAN). In preparation for their trip, Jordan was acting as a fitness guru to Brown, as well as his homegrown firearms and tactical training instructor. The duo frequently discussed the use of weapons in fighting the kuffar, both overseas and in the United States. Jordan asserted that he would not ...

The Justice Department announced that aspiring terrorist Hosam Maher Husein Smadi was sentenced to 24 years in prison for trying to blow up a Dallas skyscraper in 2009. He pleaded guilty on May 26, 2010, to one count of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. Smadi, who was 19 years old at the time, came to the attention of the FBI through his writings on a radical Islamic website. Special Agent Tom Petrowski, who oversaw the investigation out of the FBI’s Dallas office, said that Smadi “ was on a very extreme website, where people were saying a lot of unspeakable things, endorsing and celebrating acts of violence against U.S. citizens and our allies .” Petrowski added, “ What made Smadi’s postings stand out from the other rhetoric was that he was saying, ‘I want to act.’ That’s what really got our attention. Smadi wanted to imitate 9/11 and bring down a skyscraper and kill thousands of people. And he was already in the country. He said he just needed the tools—essentially he...

The Justice Department announced that four separate indictments were unsealed in the Southern District of California, the District of Minnesota and the Southern District of Alabama, charging 14 individuals with terrorism for providing money, personnel, and services to the foreign terrorist organization al Shabaab. Al-Shabaab (aka the Harakat Al-Shabaab al-Mujahidin, al-Shabab, Al-Shabaab, the Youth, Mujahidin al-Shabaab Movement, Mujahideen Youth Movement, Mujahidin Youth Movement), is an Islamic organization that controls much of southern Somalia, excluding the capital, Mogadishu. Al-Shabaab leaders have claimed affiliation with al-Qaeda since 2007. In what marked the group's first major attack outside of Somalia, al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for twin bombings that killed more than seventy people in Kampala, Uganda during the World Cup final on July 11, 2010. Jehad Mostafa – Southern District of California Prosecutors in the Southern District of California unsealed an...

Following a 6-week jury trial in the Eastern District of New York, a 67-year old naturalized American citizen Russell Defreitas (aka “Mohammed”) and a 58-year old Guyanese citizen Abdul Kadir (aka “Aubrey Michael Seaforth”) were convicted of conspiring to attack the John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in Queens, New York. Defreitas and Kadir have conspired to explode fuel tanks and the fuel pipeline under the airport with the intent to cause extensive damage to the airport and to the New York economy, as well as the loss of numerous lives. Both co-conspirators are facing possible life imprisonment. Sentencing is currently scheduled for December 15, 2010. This terror plot was thwarted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) in New York. Evidence presented at the trial has shown that Defreitas, a naturalized United States citizen from Guyana, previously worked as a cargo handler at the airport. He came up with the idea to cause an explosi...

Former FBI Agent from San Diego, Edward Preciado-Nuño, brutally murdered a 31year-old mother of four, Kimberly Ann Long, by beating her to death with a claw hammer. Most defendants in similar scenarios would be denied bail, languishing in prison until their trial date. Incredibly, Preciado-Nuño is awaiting trial from the comfort of his home, having posted a low $250,000.00 dollar bond. Edward Preciado-Nuño is a brother of Oscar Preciado – former Port Director for the San Ysidro Port of Entry (the largest and busiest land border crossing in the United States). Oscar Preciado still works at the same Port of Entry as a Special Project Manager for the Department of Homeland Security’s Bureau of Customs and Border Protection. After Edward Preciado-Nuño murdered Kimberly Long, Oscar Preciado traveled to Las Vegas in a show of support for his brother. Both of them were born in Tijuana, Mexico and moved to San Diego as children when their family immigrated to the United States. The possibility...