Man who held up cellphone store that led to detective's death by his fellow cops gets 33 years in prison

NY Daily News 

The man who sparked a friendly-fire NYPD shooting that killed a Queens detective pleaded guilty to manslaughter Wednesday as part of a deal with prosecutors that will likely put him away for 33 years.

Standing sheepishly in a rumpled dark grey suit in a courtroom fielded with detectives uniformed officers, Christopher Ransom, 30, quietly admitted to causing the Feb 12, 2019, death of Detective Brian Simonsen.

He’s expected to serve 33 years in prison when he is sentenced next month: 20 for aggravated manslaughter and 13 for robbery, prosecutors said.

The expected sentence is part of a plea arrangement between Queens prosecutors and Ransom’s attorneys at the Legal Aid Society.

“The defendant set in motion a terrible chain of events that began with a robbery and ended in a spray of bullets when Ransom pointed what appeared to be a deadly firearm toward police officers,” Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said in a statement. “(He) was repeatedly told to lower his weapon, but did not do so. The heartbreaking result was the loss of Detective Simonsen’s life and Sergeant Matthew Gorman being shot in the leg.”

Katz said she hopes the conviction brings Simonsen’s family “a measure of closure.”

Simonsen’s widow Leanne was in the courtroom for the plea. She did not speak to reporters.

“The acts of Christopher Ransom caused the death of Detective Brian Simonsen,” Paul DiGiacomo, the president of the Detectives Endowment Association said outside court. “We lost a dedicated, hero detective. It’s something we all will have to live with for the rest of our lives.”

Ransom and his accomplice, Jagger Freeman, 27, were allegedly holding up a T-Mobile store on 120th St. near Atlantic Ave. in Richmond Hill with a fake gun when cops investigating a spree of cell phone store robberies surrounded the location.

 

Recidvist criminal who killed beloved Ozone Park woman with a luxury car is caught and convicted

Queens Chronicle 

After a nine-month investigation, the suspected driver who allegedly fled the scene after killing Indo-Caribbean vocalist and Ozone Park resident Ritawantee “Rita” Persaud in a hit-and-run that shook the Queens Hindu community has been charged.

Police announced that they had arrested 23-year-old Cypress Hills resident Jason Liriano, a reputed gang member with a long list of prior charges on his record, last Thursday in connection with the incident.

On Sunday, Assembymember Jenifer Rajkumar (D-Woodhaven) organized a press conference with District Attorney Melinda Katz and various other civic and religious leaders to honor Persaud and publicize the news of the case, which had drawn rallies from advocates demanding the NYPD’s attention last winter.

“Thank you to the police for being an ally of the Indo-American community for working with us, protecting us, informing us. I am grateful for the strong relationship the NYPD has with our South Asian and Indo-Caribbean community,” Rajkumar said.

That same day, members of Persaud’s family and religious community held a separate vigil in Richmond Hill. When several members of her Hindu temple, Shanti Bhavan Mandir, arrived at the press conference, they raised some outstanding questions they had about the case that had not been answered publicly yet.

“I feel there should be more said about who the other occupants of that vehicle were,” said a woman who identified herself as a member of Persaud’s religious community. “I don’t think we know the full story.”

Persaud, 54, was taking an Uber ride in a black Toyota Camry last Christmas Eve when her vehicle was hit by a man with a passenger driving a Lamborghini SUV at Rockaway Boulevard and 103rd Avenue at approximately 7:05 p.m.

The Lamborghini driver fled the scene on foot.

Though his passenger remained at the crash site, and the NYPD later confirmed it was able to track down surveillance footage of the scene in December, the police were not able to make an immediate arrest under persistent pressure from elected officials, religious leaders and Indo-Caribbean advocates.

 

 

Ed Magnano and wife convicted of bribery charges

 

NY Post

 
Former Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano and his wife, Linda, have been found guilty at their seven-week corruption retrial on Long Island — and each now faces as much as 20 years prison.

In a late-morning split verdict Friday, a jury found Mangano guilty of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from ex-restaurant owner Harendra Singh in exchange for the once powerful pol’s help in securing more than $20 million in loans.


Ed was cleared of a single count of extortion. He was also cleared of charges that alleged he swung to Singh a lucrative contract to provide bread and rolls to the county jail, and a second contract to feed the county’s emergency workers after Hurricane Sandy.

But he could still go to prison for two decades under the one top-count conviction.
The same jury found Linda guilty of four of the five counts against her: two for obstructing justice and two for making false statements, all to cover up the bribe scheme. Ed was also convicted of a single obstruction charge.

She, too, faces a potential two-decade prison term.
 
The two are maintaining their innocence, and said they will appeal the verdicts in the case, which proved an embarrassment for Mayor de Blasio.

At both this trial and last year’s mistrial, Singh testified under a cooperation agreement that he was a big donor and had the mayor at his beck-and-call.

This may be why the co-mayors went to South Carolina this weekend. Bill took a lot more from Singh and he has also anointed his wife with a plum job running the Advance for New York fund and the funding government void THRIVE mental health program.

 

Jury still didn't buy the excuses of Skelos and son

From the NY Post:

Ex-Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos was convicted Tuesday on eight counts of bribery, extortion and conspiracy. The jury agreed he used his power to muscle companies into providing his son Adam (also convicted) with $300,000 worth of no-show and low-show jobs.

It was the second guilty verdict for the pair, whose earlier convictions were overturned based on a Supreme Court ruling that narrowed the definition of official corruption. And it took place next door to the courtroom where Alain Kaloyeros, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s economic-development czar, was convicted of bid-rigging just last week.

Since March, juries also have convicted Cuomo’s right-hand man, Joe Percoco, of soliciting and accepting bribes, as well as former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver — Skelos’ fellow member of the “three men in a room” who controlled Albany — of corruptly abusing his office.

Looks like Albany’s swamp is finally being drained, one corrupt official at a time.

Though there was nothing new in the charges, the verdict was a fresh rebuke to the state capital’s culture of corruption — and its continued refusal to enact meaningful ethics reform.

Is the Shel game over?

From the NY Post:

The ex-speaker of the New York state Assembly Sheldon Silver was found guilty on Friday of selling his office for $4 million in kickbacks — affirming a 2015 conviction on the same charges that had been overturned on appeal.

A jury of seven women and five men found Silver, 74, guilty of all seven counts against him, including two counts of honest services mail fraud and money laundering.

He faces as much as 130 years in prison when sentenced on July 13.

Skelos conviction tossed

From the Daily News:

A federal appeals panel threw out the corruption convictions of former New York Senate majority leader Dean Skelos and his son, court documents revealed Tuesday.

Acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim wasted no time in announcing that his office plans to retry the two men following the widely-expected ruling in the defendants’ favor.

Skelos and his son Adam successfully appealed their December 2015 convictions, arguing that prosecutors' arguments conflicted with a recent U.S. Supreme Court interpretation of public corruption law.

The pair were convicted of bribery, extortion and conspiracy.

Wills guilty, booted from City Council

From NY1:

A jury Thursday has found Queens City Councilman Ruben Wills guilty on five of six counts against him in his corruption trial.

Wills was accused of stealing more than $30,000 in taxpayer money, funneling it through his nonprofit group, then using it, among other things, on clothes, fast food, gas and, in one case, a $690 Louis Vuitton handbag.

After the verdict, he was upbeat and defiant. "I'm just going to sit here and make sure that my community knows that I'm innocent," Wills said to reporters. "I didn't steal any money. I'm disappointed in the verdict."

A city councilman representing southeast Queens since 2011, Wills now automatically loses his council seat.

Wills faces up to seven years in prison. His attorney plans to appeal.

Let's recall that the Queens Machine endorsed him while he was under indictment.

Now what happens? Do they pick his successor?

Silver skates but will be retried

From NY1:

Former state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver's conviction on fraud, money laundering, and extortion was overturned Thursday.

The judge used a Supreme Court precedent involving former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, which more clearly defined the kind of conduct that could be considered corrupt while in office.

"The court talks about certain acts that Silver was shown to have taken that no longer can be considered official acts, such as having a meeting," attorney Joshua Colangelo-Bryan said.

"It is not clear beyond a reasonable doubt that a rational jury would have reached the same conclusion if properly instructed, as is required by the law for the verdict to stand," Jose Cabranes of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision said in his decision.

In a statement, acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim says he will re-try the case.

Silver disbarred

From Politico:

Former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who was convicted on felony corruption charges last year relating to the confluence of his work as a lawyer and a lawmaker, has been disbarred.

Silver automatically lost his Assembly seat upon his conviction, and on Tuesday, a state court revoked his ability to practice law.

Dean is done

From the Queens Chronicle:

Less than two weeks after former Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver was convicted on bribery charges, his state Senate contemporary, former Majority Leader Dean Skelos, was found guilty of corruption on Friday.

The 67-year-old Skelos and his 33-year-old son, Adam, were convicted in Federal District Court on all charges, which included three counts of extortion under color of official right, two counts of soliciting bribes in connection with a federal program and one count of conspiracy to commit honest services fraud.

The father-son duo are facing up to 130 years in prison, according to reports, and will be sentenced early next year.

The elder Skelos allegedly used his position to get money into the pockets of his son. Among the allegations made by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are that Dean Skelos got a developer dependent on him for tax breaks to give Adam Skelos $20,000, and an environmental technology company seeking to do business with the state to give him $10,000 a month.

"The swift convictions of Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos beg an important question," U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement, "how many prosecutions will it take before Albany gives the people of New York the honest government they deserve?"

Getting Silver is gold

From the Wall Street Journal:

Sheldon Silver’s conviction Monday in one of New York’s highest-profile public-corruption cases in decades could signal a shift in the business of Albany and spark further investigations of a capital with a long-standing reputation for questionable conduct.

The Democratic speaker of the state Assembly for more than 20 years, Mr. Silver was found guilty by a 12-person federal jury in Manhattan of four counts of honest-services fraud, two counts of extortion and one count of money laundering.

At the heart of the case was the question of whether procedures and conduct that are commonplace to Albany are, in fact, a violation of the law, or whether they are simply the perhaps objectionable but also unavoidable consequence of having a part-time Legislature.

As one of Mr. Silver’s defense attorneys, Justin Shur, put it during proceedings: “Throughout this trial, the government has pointed to things that have gone on in Albany which [are] standard practices in terms of how grants are reviewed, in terms of how member items are allocated, and suggested that they’re improper.”

The jury decided those actions and others taken by Mr. Silver were illegal, bringing an end to his lengthy political career.

Albany, roiled by Mr. Silver’s arrest in January, now faces a crisis of conscience on whether and how to respond to the conviction of someone who dominated state politics as long as most legislators or anyone in New York’s political orbit can remember.

Sampson found guilty

From Crains:

A New York state senator has been convicted on federal charges he sought to sabotage an investigation targeting him for embezzlement.

A Brooklyn jury reached the verdict Friday in the corruption case against Sen. John Sampson.

He was found guilty of one count of obstruction of justice and two counts of making false statements.

He was acquitted on six other counts, including witness tampering.

Malcolm Smith, Vince Tabone convicted

From NBC:

Former Democratic state Sen. Malcolm Smith has been found guilty of scheming to bribe Republican party leaders so he could run on the GOP line in a New York City mayoral race, making him the latest ex-Albany leader to be convicted of corruption.

Smith is the latest line in Albany's corrupt legacy. Sheldon Silver, speaker of the State Assembly for more than two decades, was arrested late last month on federal corruption charges.

Vince Tabone was also convicted on all charges.

Tabone really stepped in it!

From the NY Post:

As jury selection began Monday in the new bribery trial for former state senator Malcolm Smith, his co-defendant was slapped with ​new charges — for allegedly tampering with a witness.

Prosecutors say former Queens Republican Vice Chairman Vincent Tabone on May 23 confronted Philip Ragusa, who then chaired the borough’s GOP party, at his home and tried to convince him not to testify when Tabone and Smith were on trial earlier this year for trying to fix the 2013 mayoral race.

That White Plains federal court proceeding resulted in a June mistrial following the feds’ late release of more than 92 hours of recordings – including 28 hours in Yiddish yet to be translated.

A superseding indictment in the $200,000 bribery case now alleges Tabone spoke to the “county chairman,” who is not mentioned by name, while the chairman was “failing in health” and “resting in bed” and “encouraged” him not to testify. Tabone also allegedly claimed “no court” could “force” Ragusa to testify. The death-bed conversation took place an hour before Ragusa was supposed to give a deposition to prosecutors.

Ragusa, who was never charged with wrongdoing, was expected to eventually testify at the trial in defense of another co-defendant, former Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Queens), but died in June of leukemia.

I gotta laugh at this, because Tabone originally claimed that he would get the charges dismissed because he wasn't an elected official and therefore couldn't be charged with bribery and now he went ahead and screwed himself. Once you're charged with a federal crime, it's best not to talk to anyone because the wiretaps and nervous witnesses are more than likely gonna trip you up.

Council members order NYPD to ignore the Feds

From the Politicker:

The New York City Council overwhelmingly passed legislation today to stop the Department of Correction and the NYPD from honoring immigration detainers issued by the federal government unless they are accompanied by a judge’s warrant.

The council voted 41 in favor and 6 against on two bills that will largely end cooperation with the federal government when it requests an immigration detainer — which asks Corrections or the NYPD to hold a person for 48 hours when they might otherwise be released so that the person can be handed over the the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. The requests are often made when an undocumented immigrant is being released from jail for another crime, or if they have been in NYPD custody for questioning.

Under the new legislation, which Mayor Bill de Blasio has said he supports, the city will honor immigration waivers if the federal government requests them with a judge’s warrant — and even then, only if the subject of the warrant was convicted within the last five years of a violent or serious crime, or is a possible match on the terrorism watch list.

So they passed a law that said the NYPD should ignore a federal judge's warrant? And only 2 Queens councilmembers (Vallone and Ulrich) voted against this? Holy crap, we're in big trouble.

More litigation possible if people don't get hired

From Crains:

A City Council bill barring employers from asking job candidates if they have ever been convicted of a crime is meant to help felons re-enter society.

But the fine print of the initiative could lead to lawsuits against employers, according to one legal expert.

The bill, which is likely to become law in some form, would prohibit the commonly used "check boxes" on job applications that ask about past convictions. It also would forbid employers from asking questions about an applicant's criminal history until a conditional job offer has been tendered.

A number of states have similar laws. But Mark Goldstein, a labor and employment attorney at Reed Smith LLP, says New York City’s would go further, as it would cover businesses with as few as four employees—placing new burdens on small employers. By contrast, New Jersey's recently passed law applies to businesses with 15 or more workers.

The bigger concern is lawsuits from job seekers. To be able to reject an applicant because of a past conviction, employers would have to go through a rigorous process that, if not followed, would result in the presumption that a business owner engaged in unlawful discrimination, Mr. Goldstein said.

“I think you’d see some increases in litigation, and this is not exactly a well-settled area of law,” he said.

Baldeo convicted

From the Times Ledger:

A federal jury found Ozone Park Democrat Albert Baldeo guilty of obstruction of justice, but acquitted him of mail and wire fraud charges Monday, a spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.

Baldeo, a former Democratic district leader and candidate for office, turned himself into the FBI in November 2012, after he was charged with having fake donors contribute to his failed 2010 City Council campaign to receive matching funds from the city and obstructing the government’s investigation. He was running against City Councilman Ruben Wills (D-Jamaica).

Jurors handed down convictions on seven obstruction of justice charges, but did not find Baldeo guilty on three charges of mail and wire fraud, Bharara’s staff said.

The seven charges each carry sentences of up to 20 years behind bar, according to Bharara’s office.

Bill introduced to protect the convicted

From the Daily News:

Businesses would be banned from asking job applicants about their criminal records under a proposed city law.

The bill, which will be introduced this week, would prohibit commonly used check boxes on applications asking if the job seeker has been convicted of a crime, or any questions about the job seeker’s criminal record until after a job offer has been made.

“It’s extremely difficult for people who have convictions to get jobs,” said sponsor Jumaane Williams (D-Brooklyn). “It’s disheartening. If you’ve paid your debt to society, you should not have to do that again.”

Employers could be hit with $1,000 in damages if they asked about an applicant’s criminal record too soon.

The city already bars asking about convictions for government jobs, but the new bill would extend the mandate to all employers.

Under the bill, known as the “Fair Chance Act,” employers would only be able to retract a job offer if they discovered a conviction related to the job or that posed an undue risk to their business.

Jobs that require background checks would be unaffected by the changes.

Another one bites the dust

From the Politicker:

Assemblyman William Boyland Jr. has been convicted on federal corruption charges today, according to a spokesperson for U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch.

Mr. Boyland was convicted on all 21 counts accusing him of four schemes, including a top count of attempted extortion while serving as an elected official.

The Brownsville assemblyman, hailing from one of Brooklyn’s most prominent political families, was indicted on corruption charges previously but was found not guilty.

Now that Mr. Boyland has been convicted, he will be expelled from his chamber, and his seat will remain vacant until Gov. Andrew Cuomo calls a special election–which he has been reluctant to do–or until the next election. Multiple candidates have already declared their intentions to run for the seat.

Mr. Boyland was immediately taken into custody, according to the New York Post. The assemblyman faces up to the 30 years behind bars.

Pastor convicted of immigration fraud

From the NY Post:

A Queens deacon has been convicted of helping Chinese immigrants seek asylum over bogus religious beliefs by coaching them in how to lie to the feds.

Liying Lin, a 30-year-old deacon at the Full Gospel Global Mission Church in Flushing, was found guilty by a Manhattan federal jury on Tuesday on three of the four counts of immigration-fraud charges she had faced.

The feds say she offered paid lessons on Christianity to immigrants and then coached them on how to falsely seek asylum by claiming they were persecuted by China for their religious beliefs.

She is one of 26 defendants indicted by the feds in 2012 for allegedly participating in separate but overlapping immigration-fraud schemes related to the submission of hundreds of asylum applications containing fabricated claims of persecution. Most of the defendants are law firm staffers, including six Big Apple lawyers and many paralegals.