ReportWire

Tag: fbi agent

  • Documents will be unsealed in L.A. city attorney and DWP corruption case, judge rules

    Documents will be unsealed in L.A. city attorney and DWP corruption case, judge rules

    More than 1,000 pages of confidential documents from a federal criminal investigation into the Los Angeles city attorney’s office and the Department of Water and Power will be unsealed, a federal judge signaled Friday.

    The Times and Consumer Watchdog had requested the documents to better understand the government’s criminal case and whether former City Atty. Mike Feuer bore any culpability for a scandal involving a sham lawsuit and an extortion plot. Feuer has long denied wrongdoing.

    In a tentative ruling, U.S. District Judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr. said the documents, which consist mainly of dozens of search warrants filed during the government’s investigation, will be unsealed, with personal data redacted.

    The names of public officials, along with individuals who are “wrongdoers,” will not be redacted, Blumenfeld said at a hearing Friday — a blow to prosecutors who had sought to keep the officials’ names from the public.

    The Times and Consumer Watchdog are expected to work with the U.S. attorney’s office to ready the documents for release in the coming weeks.

    Much of Friday’s hearing centered on Feuer and whether an FBI agent’s alleged assertions that Feuer lied to a grand jury and lied to the FBI should be redacted.

    The FBI agent’s purported comments, made in an affidavit for a search warrant, were revealed in court by a defendant, Paul Paradis, at his sentencing in November.

    Paradis, a former attorney turned cooperating witness for the federal government, pleaded guilty to accepting a nearly $2.2 million kickback from another attorney working on the DWP case and was sentenced to 33 months in prison.

    Paradis had ingratiated himself at City Hall, befriending top city officials. An outside lawyer from New York, he was retained by Feuer’s office to help with litigation related to the DWP, then went on to secure separate contracts at the DWP.

    Later, he secretly recorded high-ranking city officials and was present when armed agents raided the home of DWP general manager David Wright, who is serving a six-year sentence after conspiring to give Paradis a lucrative contract.

    Jerry Flanagan, an attorney for Consumer Watchdog and The Times, told Blumenfeld that the FBI agent’s comments amounted to an “opinion” that wasn’t subject to federal rules that require grand jury information to be kept confidential. Flanagan also argued that the “cat is out of the bag” because Paradis had publicly revealed the alleged comments.

    Blumenfeld appeared concerned about protecting the secrecy of the grand jury process and said he would rule later on the issue.

    Feuer has said he had no knowledge of any crimes. In a 2022 letter, the U.S. attorney’s office told Feuer that he wasn’t a target in their criminal investigation.

    When asked by The Times last November about the FBI agent‘s alleged statements, Feuer pointed to the 2022 letter.

    Feuer also told The Times last year that he gave the U.S. attorney’s office his phone in 2020, but investigators did not search his home or office.

    A former state assemblymember and L.A. City Council member, Feuer ran for L.A. mayor in 2022 but dropped out shortly before the primary. Last month, he finished fourth in the primary for the congressional seat being vacated by Rep. Adam B. Schiff.

    The 1,400 pages of search warrants and other documents requested by The Times and Consumer Watchdog were issued between 2019 and 2021.

    Court filings by prosecutors in the criminal case make clear that some individuals, including city officials who remain anonymous in the filings, took part in or were aware of various schemes.

    Only four people were ultimately charged, and prosecutors said that their case concluded last year.

    The criminal prosecution centered on a 2015 class-action lawsuit brought by DWP customers over massive errors caused by a new billing system at the utility.

    The lawsuit was covertly written by Paradis, then working for Feuer’s office, who handed the suit to an outside attorney to file against the city.

    The goal, according to prosecutors, was to settle all the claims by various DWP customers on terms advantageous to the city.

    Prosecutors also uncovered other unethical and illegal schemes, including an illicit payment involving the city attorney’s office.

    Blumenfeld said at Friday’s hearing that he expected the name of one person, Julissa Salgueiro, to remain unredacted in the search warrants and other documents.

    “Ms. Salgueiro is a quintessential wrongdoer,” Blumenfeld said, describing why her name should be unredacted.

    Prosecutors have never named or charged Salgueiro, but their court filings refer to a former employee of a Beverly Hills law firm who threatened to reveal the city’s collusive lawsuit over the DWP billing errors.

    The employee had “stolen or improperly retained” documents showing the collusive lawsuit and demanded money for their return, prosecutors said in court documents.

    Thomas Peters, a top aide to Feuer, was charged with aiding and abetting extortion after being ordered by unnamed city staff to take care of the employee’s threats, according to prosecutors. Prosecutors never charged any other senior staff members from the city attorney’s office.

    After pleading guilty, Peters was sentenced to nine months home detention and ordered to pay a $50,000 fine.

    Salgueiro’s attorney, William Pitman, told The Times on Friday that he “respectfully disagrees with Judge Blumenfeld’s opinion.” His client has never been charged, indicted and has no criminal history, he said.

    “With regard to the unsealing motion, Ms. Salguiero was never notified [of the case],” said Pitman.

    Dakota Smith

    Source link

  • Neighbor heard odd noises amid heist of up to $30 million from Sylmar vault

    Neighbor heard odd noises amid heist of up to $30 million from Sylmar vault

    It was a strange mechanical sound — a kind of rhythmic whirring — and it wouldn’t quit.

    At the time, the resident of Tahitian Mobile Home Park in Sylmar didn’t think much of the weekend racket, which seemed to be coming from a neighboring industrial building and may have lasted two hours or more, she said.

    Now, though, after learning that the warehouse behind the park was breached by thieves who stole as much as $30 million in a Sunday night heist, the woman has fixated on that odd noise — and what it may have been.

    “That sound is embedded in my head,” said the woman, who requested her name not be published over privacy concerns. “My mind is still going crazy over what happened. I know it’s just money, but they’re invading your space.”

    The elaborate Easter heist is believed to be among the biggest in L.A. history. It occurred at a Roxford Street facility where cash from businesses across the Southland is handled and stored by GardaWorld, a security services company. In a display of uncommon sophistication, thieves breached the single-story building via its roof to gain access to its vault — and avoided the property’s alarm system, according to sources with knowledge of the investigation of the theft.

    Montreal-based GardaWorld did not learn of the crime until opening the vault on Monday. The company did not respond to requests for comment.

    George Alhosry, who owns the Kwik Market & Deli on Roxford, said the store’s Wi-Fi was down much of Sunday. “We couldn’t access the Lotto,” he said, adding that mobile phone calls failed in the area, too.

    It’s unclear whether that was connected to the heist. But Wi-Fi jammers have become a common tool of theft gangs during their burglaries of homes in Southern California because they knock out many security cameras that could capture video or stills of them or their vehicles.

    Authorities have so far said little about the mysterious heist, which is being investigated by the FBI and Los Angeles Police Department. The Times previously reported that there was also an effort by the thieves to breach the side of the GardaWorld building. It’s unclear whether this was part of their attempts to enter or exit the warehouse. A KABC-TV News video aired Wednesday night showed a large cut on the side of the structure that was covered by a piece of plywood. By Thursday afternoon, the wall appeared to be patched up.

    The crime has rattled Sylmar, where residents and merchants near the GardaWorld building told The Times they were shocked that such an audacious heist occurred in their midst.

    Yet some locals were more focused on street crime than a high-dollar heist that appeared to bear the hallmarks of a silver screen spectacle. Take Victor Benitez, who said that the particulars of the heist seemed to be plucked from a 1980s action movie. Standing near a shabby section of San Fernando Road, where shaggy palm trees wore their browning fronds like beards, he lamented that prostitution and violent crime are problems in the area.

    “Five weeks ago, the police brought a dog in, they searched the area for an active shooter — but it wasn’t in the news,” said Benitez as a train rumbled by on adjacent tracks. “I would not recommend living here.”

    Damage to a wall at the GardaWorld building in Sylmar appeared to be repaired on Thursday.

    (Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

    Sandi Gomez, a resident of the mobile home park whose property offers a view of the GardaWorld building, said she didn’t notice anything amiss over last weekend. She said she told FBI agents the same thing when they visited her Monday afternoon and asked if she “saw or heard anything suspicious around 4 a.m.” Sunday.

    Gomez was asleep at the time.

    The FBI agents also wanted to know about a security camera mounted on a portion of her home that faces the GardaWorld property. Gomez said she explained to the agents that the camera only offers a live view and doesn’t record footage. The next day, she said, LAPD investigators walked the area.

    The mobile home park is a dense neighborhood of tightly spaced trailers lining numbered avenues. On Thursday afternoon, stray cats stalked a weedy patch at the back of the property, which is separated from the GardaWorld building by fences, unkempt foliage and a line of trees.

    A representative of the mobile home park declined to comment.

    The burgled facility, hemmed in on one side by the active train tracks, is owned by World Oil Corp. GardaWorld has been the sole tenant there since the warehouse was built in 2000, according to real estate data firm CoStar.

    World Oil did not respond to requests for comment.

    The GardaWorld episode comes nearly two years after another high-profile Southern California heist: the multimillion-dollar theft of jewelry from a Brink’s big rig at a Grapevine truck stop. There’s debate about the value of those pilfered goods, with estimates ranging from less than $10 million to more than $100 million. The July 2022 crime remains unsolved.

    Rooftop burglaries have been extremely rare in Los Angeles — but there have been some notable ones in recent years. Last summer, burglars broke into Lincoln Fine Wines in Venice via a hole they cut in its roof. The thieves went on to steal about 800 bottles worth about $600,000 — making it one of the biggest wine crimes in California history.

    That incident occurred at the start of the Fourth of July weekend, similar to the Easter thievery at the GardaWorld property. Scott Andrew Selby, co-author of “Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History,” said burglars sometimes strike on and around major holidays.

    “This crew, like others, picked a holiday with fewest eyes paying attention,” he said.

    Times staff writers Ruben Vives and Roger Vincent contributed to this report.

    Daniel Miller, Richard Winton

    Source link