Affidavit

A 55-year-old Howard County man charged with setting fire to a Highland house on Halloween amid a dispute over its ownership made an initial appearance yesterday in federal court. Scott Daniel Wilson, formerly of the 7200 block of Mink Hollow Road, could face a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison and up to 20 years if convicted, according to the Maryland U.S. attorney's office. According to an affidavit filed before his arrest Friday, Wilson has a record that includes arson convictions and dates to incidents on the Eastern Shore between 1979 and 1982.

If the original release of the infamous Jason Grimsley affidavit - with the names of the alleged steroid and amphetamine users blacked out for public nonconsumption - helped pull the cover off baseball's performance-enhancement scandal, the release of the unredacted version Thursday might have been an even bigger blow to the integrity of the sport. Think about it. When the feds decided to throw those last few names into the public arena, they probably never considered how the surprising absence of several well-known players might undermine the credibility of the Mitchell Report and create a new layer of uncertainty about the steroid era. Of course, it isn't the job of federal investigators to worry about the effect of their work on a private enterprise, even one that is considered to be the national pastime.

An Arnold businessman who wants to turn his mansion on St. Helena Island into a private club allegedly has been concealing an income of millions of dollars from the Internal Revenue Service since 1994, according to an affidavit filed after a two-year federal investigation.Keith J. Osborne, president of Fantasy Island Management Inc., received millions of dollars in 1992 and from 1994 to 1997 but sporadically filed tax returns in those years, according to the affidavit IRS special agents Michael R. O'Hanlon and Antonio Gomez filed last month to obtain an April 7 search warrant.

An Arnold businessman who wants to turn his mansion on St. Helena Island into a private club allegedly has been concealing an income of millions of dollars from the Internal Revenue Service since 1994, according to an affidavit filed after a two-year federal investigation.Keith J. Osborne, president of Fantasy Island Management Inc., received millions of dollars in 1992 and from 1994 to 1997 but sporadically filed tax returns in those years, according to the affidavit IRS special agents Michael R. O'Hanlon and Antonio Gomez filed last month to obtain an April 7 search warrant.

When federal agents leapt from their cars and pointed guns at three Northern Virginia men poised to invade a home in Lutherville last week, it was the end of a long road -- literally.Agents had been investigating one of the men arrested Thursday, Yuem Ming Chan -- who calls himself Austin Chan -- for almost three years, trailing him from New York to a small brick rowhouse in Burke, Va., and finally to a secluded street in Lutherville.All three have been charged with conspiracy to rob and extort, and with weapons violations.

A former Honda Motor Co. executive was sentenced yesterday in federal court in Baltimore to five months in prison for lying in a sworn statement to a judge presiding over a lawsuit against the company by several of its dealers.U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake also sentenced Gregory T. Savoy, 31, of Cherry Hill, N.J., to two years of supervised release, including five months on home detention, and 100 hours of community service.Savoy was found guilty by a federal jury in January of perjury and obstruction of justice.

MIKE COLLEGE, Mike Smith and John Campbell look more like three street toughs than the Maryland state troopers they are. But as undercover narcotics cops, that's how they're supposed to look.College -- that's Sgt. Mike College -- has worked undercover for 20 years."He taught me how to buy dope," said Maj. Greg Shipley, the state police spokesman who also worked as an undercover narc. Smith and Campbell, both corporals, have worked undercover five and seven years, respectively.They note their undercover experience to let folks know that when it comes to the business of taking down drug rings, they know what they're doing.

A courier for a notorious Bulgarian counterfeiting ring was sentenced yesterday to eight months in federal prison for bringing nearly $63,000 in phony $100 bills to Maryland.The bills are believed to have been printed on a secret offset press somewhere in Bulgaria, home to one of the world's largest counterfeiting operations, U.S. Secret Service agents said. More than $3.5 million of the counterfeit U.S. bills suspected to have been made there have surfaced around the world.Valeri Gueorguiev, 37, who carried counterfeit money in Maryland and elsewhere for the ring, apologized for what he had done at a hearing in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.

A former day care provider and National Security Agency employee was given a 13-month sentence yesterday for possessing child pornography videotapes, some of which he bought from undercover federal agents in a sting operation.Charles Meldrum, 58, told Judge Andre M. Davis in U.S. District Court in Baltimore that he has made progress in dealing with an addiction to pornography."I apologize to everyone," said Meldrum, who with his wife had run a day care center in their Columbia home from 1990 to 1992.

A former Honda Motor Co. official was indicted in Baltimore yesterday for allegedly making false statements to a federal judge during the course of litigation against the company, which being sued in a bribery scandal.Gregory T. Savoy, 30, of Cherry Hill, N.J., is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with a July 1997 affidavit submitted to Chief Judge J. Frederick Motz in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, federal prosecutors said.Motz had received the affidavit as part of pending civil claims by dealers that Honda conspired to send shipments of cars to those willing to pay bribes while punishing dealers who refused to take part in a kickback scheme.

FBI agents seized a rifle and more than 150 rounds of ammunition, along with life insurance paperwork and a handwritten will, from the Annapolis apartment of James von Brunn, the 88-year-old white supremacist accused of killing a black guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum last week, according to search warrant records filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Maryland. Computers, financial records, personal correspondence, a note "regarding plant care," and a "painting of what appears to be Hitler and Jesus" were also taken with dozens of other items, the documents say. Representatives from the Washington field office of the FBI, which is overseeing the investigation, did not return calls seeking comment.

Brown charged with 2 felonies in attack Chris Brown has been charged with two felonies stemming from what a police detective describes as a brutal argument between the singer and his girlfriend, Rihanna. Brown appeared in court yesterday on charges of assault likely to cause great bodily injury and making criminal threats. The R&B singer, 19, was granted a request for a continuance until April 6. He remains free on $50,000 bail. According to a detective's affidavit, Brown and Rihanna got into a fight early Feb. 8 after the "Umbrella" singer checked her boyfriend's cell phone and found a text message from another woman.

CHICAGO - Democratic Sen. Roland Burris, appointed late last year to replace Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate, has informed Illinois lawmakers that he did not tell them the complete story about his contacts with close associates of Gov. Rod Blagojevich before he got the job. The admission came in a sworn affidavit filed quietly by Burris last week with the Illinois House, and it raises questions about the new senator's credibility as he begins to finish...

Miguel Tejada's guilty plea yesterday might give credibility to Rafael Palmeiro's claims that he received contaminated B-12 from Tejada. The Jason Grimsley affidavit in 2006 was the first hint Palmeiro might have plausible deniability. ( For more, go to baltimoresun.com/schmuckblog)

A 55-year-old Howard County man charged with setting fire to a Highland house on Halloween amid a dispute over its ownership made an initial appearance yesterday in federal court. Scott Daniel Wilson, formerly of the 7200 block of Mink Hollow Road, could face a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison and up to 20 years if convicted, according to the Maryland U.S. attorney's office. According to an affidavit filed before his arrest Friday, Wilson has a record that includes arson convictions and dates to incidents on the Eastern Shore between 1979 and 1982.

No surprise that the prosecutor who's been dogging Sheila Dixon for years thinks she's corrupt. The real shocker, if her indictment is to be believed, is that Sheila Dixon thinks Sheila Dixon is corrupt. Dixon might have looked dirty to most of us for allegedly taking lavish gifts from a developer and giving him big city tax breaks, but I'd always imagined that her conscience was clear. Blind to conflicts of interest? You bet. Conscious of them? Self-conscious about them? No way. Yet the indictment describes someone who knows she's got something to hide, the sort who ought to be indicted on Richard Nixon's birthday, as she was Friday.

No surprise that the prosecutor who's been dogging Sheila Dixon for years thinks she's corrupt. The real shocker, if her indictment is to be believed, is that Sheila Dixon thinks Sheila Dixon is corrupt. Dixon might have looked dirty to most of us for allegedly taking lavish gifts from a developer and giving him big city tax breaks, but I'd always imagined that her conscience was clear. Blind to conflicts of interest? You bet. Conscious of them? Self-conscious about them? No way. Yet the indictment describes someone who knows she's got something to hide, the sort who ought to be indicted on Richard Nixon's birthday, as she was Friday.

Now can we all stop taking the simplistic, easy-to-swallow approach to steroids in baseball? Can we all admit that this is way more complex than we've been treating it over the years? All of us. Baseball and union officials. Fans. Media. The Justice Department. Congress. It is obvious now, more than ever, that we don't know what we're dealing with. How much more proof do we need that we, the entire baseball-observing public, have handled the issue of performance-enhancing drugs all wrong?

If the original release of the infamous Jason Grimsley affidavit - with the names of the alleged steroid and amphetamine users blacked out for public nonconsumption - helped pull the cover off baseball's performance-enhancement scandal, the release of the unredacted version Thursday might have been an even bigger blow to the integrity of the sport. Think about it. When the feds decided to throw those last few names into the public arena, they probably never considered how the surprising absence of several well-known players might undermine the credibility of the Mitchell Report and create a new layer of uncertainty about the steroid era. Of course, it isn't the job of federal investigators to worry about the effect of their work on a private enterprise, even one that is considered to be the national pastime.

The whisper campaign started almost as soon as news broke that federal agents had raided the home of former Orioles pitcher Jason Grimsley and a document existed that included the names of current and former major league players who may have been involved with steroids, human growth hormone and amphetamines. That was four months ago, and only in the past few days have those whispers taken the shape of real people with real reputations who have - fairly or not - been damaged by the published reports that they were identified as steroid users in the infamous Grimsley affidavit.