False Statement

An Iranian-born businessman admitted yesterday that he tried to ship sophisticated scientific equipment from Maryland to Iran in violation of a U.S. trade embargo - a transaction that was ultimately blocked by an undercover sting operation. Mohammad R. Ehsan, 50, pleaded guilty in federal court in Baltimore to a charge of making a false statement to customs officials. His business, P&M Trading Inc., based in California, pleaded guilty to violating the trade restrictions. U.S. District Judge William M. Nickerson sentenced Ehsan to one year of probation and fined him $5,000.

A Nottingham reader bought an older home in October. Before settlement, she had a home inspection and a walk-through done. No water problems were observed. Twelve days after settlement, the buyer saw water near a basement wall. She contacted the former owner, who told her that twice he had major incidents involving water in the basement, both of which he corrected. The owner said he had told the buyer and her real estate agent about the problems when they first viewed the home. The buyer said the owner never mentioned water problems.

Howard County police arrested a man at Wilde Lake High School yesterday morning and accused him of threatening two teenagers with a handgun and bringing the gun onto the school parking lot as students were arriving for classes. Edward Brown, 62, of Jason Lane in Columbia was charged with first-degree assault and possession of a gun on school property, police said. Officers received a call about 7:10 a.m. from a person who heard a car alarm, looked out his window and saw a man with a gun get into a maroon Porsche on Jason Lane.

A former Baltimore trucking executive who showered Maryland politicians with allegedly tainted campaign contributions had little to say yesterday when he appeared in federal court to face a flurry of criminal charges.Brian H. Davis, 40, denied that he defrauded banks and other lenders out of nearly $1.7 million and lied to the Internal Revenue Service."Do you understand the charges that have been placed against you?" a clerk asked Davis as he stood in U.S. Magistrate Judge Clarence E. Goetz's courtroom in Baltimore, where he was arraigned on 17 counts of bank fraud, wire fraud and making a false statement to the IRS."

Two former executives of Nurad Inc. have been sentenced to federal prison terms for concealing defects in antennas the company made for radar-jamming devices on Air Force F-16 fighter planes.At a hearing late yesterday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, Judge Walter E. Black Jr. sentenced David W. Rider, 50, of the 1800 block of Cosner Road in Forest Hill, to three years in prison and Bruce B. Kopp, 35, of the 2900 block of Salem Road in Woodlawn, to eight months in prison.Rider is Nurad's former vice president and director of engineering.

On Sept. 11, after the terrorist attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Maryland officials evacuated the State House complex in Annapolis and the World Trade Center in Baltimore because they had received what they thought was a credible tip that both could be attack targets. But it was all a hoax. Yesterday, the man who police say placed a prank call to the Maryland Emergency Management Agency was given probation before judgment by Baltimore Circuit Judge John M. Glynn, which means he won't have a criminal record if he abides by the terms of probation.

THE SENATOR-ELECT from the state's 44th Legislative District stood out in front of City Hall, surrounded by the usual suspects.Del. Clarence Mitchell IV was there to reiterate what he had said in a news release: Police Commissioner Thomas Frazier should resign or be fired. It was one day after this paper revealed that Frazier had testified that there was a disparity in the number of black officers fired for disciplinary reasons."We have bodies upon bodies of African-American officers who have been terminated," Mitchell said.

Mark Milton Feinberg, who presided over a once-thriving mortgage business in Columbia, was convicted in U.S. District Court in Baltimore yesterday of five fraud counts in connection with a $5 million scheme to keep his fiscally troubled company afloat.Feinberg, 47, stared in disbelief at the jurors as they stood in the fifth-floor courtroom to confirm their verdicts, reached after a two-week trial and a little more than eight hours of deliberations over three days.With his family and friends sobbing in the first-row of the courtroom, the former president of Consumer First Mortgage Inc. turned to his wife, shrugged his shoulders and gave her a kiss.

Carroll man charged with falsely claiming terrorist poison plot A 38-year-old Carroll County man has been charged with lying to authorities about supposed terrorist activities by falsely claiming that his roommate planned to put rat poison in food at the market where he works, according the state police at the Westminster barracks. John William Tyler of the 700 block of Humbert Schoolhouse Road in northern Carroll County surrendered yesterday afternoon, after state and federal agencies had spent three days investigating what seemed to be a believable report, police said.

The president of the once-bustling Consumer First Mortgage Inc. in Columbia went on trial in federal court yesterday, facing charges that he swindled two banks out of more than $5 million in an elaborate fraud scheme.Prosecutors told jurors in U.S. District Court in Baltimore that Mark Milton Feinberg, 47, concocted the alleged scheme to cover up nearly $2 million in losses his mortgage company had suffered."He intentionally sought to get over on these banks," assistant U.S. attorney Barbara S. Sale said during opening statements yesterday.