Money Laundering

Money launderer Philip Manglitz will remain free until his September sentencing but must wear an electronic monitoring device and report to a probation officer once a week, a federal judge ruled yesterday.U.S. District Judge Herbert Maletz laid out the restrictions during a hearing in federal court in Baltimore yesterday. He also increased the Glenwood developer's bond to $1.3 million.Federal prosecutors -- concerned that Manglitz might flee before his sentencing -- had wanted to revoke the Glenwood developer's bond, sending him into custody.

For more than a year, authorities believe, Steven "J.R. " Blackwell Jr. was at the center of a street war with a rival faction that saw as many as two dozen people shot across Baltimore. In an empty federal courtroom Wednesday, the 27-year-old Blackwell, never previously convicted of a crime, pleaded guilty to overseeing a multimillion-dollar heroin conspiracy and laundering the proceeds through gambling winnings in Las Vegas and state lottery tickets. Though the charges were devoid of accusations of violence, court records have linked Blackwell to a wave of shootings and killings touched off by the April 2008 abduction of his then-teenage brothers.

Leonard Bramson, who along with his father and brother devised a nationwide insurance fraud scheme that bilked at least $10 million from doctors, had his nine-year prison sentence reduced by 11 months Friday.Prosecutors in U.S. District Court in Baltimore were tight-lipped about the details, saying only that Mr. Bramson had provided information on "an unspecified case" in New Jersey and therefore earned the sentence reduction. The file was sealed.The development is but another mysterious chapter to the Bramson story.

The owner of a company that defrauded more than 1,000 homeowners — most from Maryland — in an "egregious" $78 million investment scheme was convicted Thursday in federal court in Greenbelt of conspiracy to commit money laundering and related crimes. Andrew Hamilton Williams Jr., 60, of Metro Dream Homes promised to pay off people's mortgages if they invested in his company, according to the U.S. attorney for Maryland. But it was nothing but a Ponzi scheme, prosecutors said. Williams and other company officials used some of the proceeds to enrich themselves, at one point hiring chauffeurs to drive them around in a fleet of luxury cars.

Leonard A. Bramson launched his career in crime while he was a law student and went on to help carry out an elaborate family scheme that used bogus insurance companies to defraud customers of millions of dollars."

A Baltimore County man who operated a sports information service has been sentenced to 2 1/2 years in federal prison after being convicted of wire fraud and money laundering in defrauding his clients.U.S. District Judge Andre M. Davis also ordered Marc Neal Robert Berman, 36, of the 8500 block of Arborwood Road in Stevenson to pay $100,000 in restitution and forfeit property in Randallstown and $189,000 at Friday's sentencing hearing.Berman pleaded guilty in November to using interstate wire transfers to commit a scheme to defraud, and laundering the proceeds, the U.S. attorney's office said.

Business was so brisk at S&F Check Cashers, a modest check-cashing concern in West New York, N.J., across the Hudson River from Manhattan, that the dollars it collected were reportedly sometimes hauled to the bank by an armored-car company.But as Marion Percell, an assistant U.S. attorney in Newark, observed, "A check-cashing service should be getting money from the bank, not sending it in."The service was part of what law enforcement officials here say was a larger conspiracy that sent as much as $60 million in drug profits back to the Cali cartel in Colombia under the cover of such mundane services as selling telephone debit cards and money orders, renting beepers and cashing checks.

GENEVA A group of major international banks, stung by the growing reputation of the banking industry as a haven for ill-gotten gains, are pledging to form a global front against money laundering. They plan to issue guidelines to toughen their practices to shut off dirty-money deposits by organized crime and corrupt political leaders. Details will not be released until next week, but a significant provision in the new code of conduct will require banks to bring the activities of offshore banking subsidiaries in line with tougher rules on financial crime.

It was going to be the perfect computer crime, orchestrated with elaborate Internet planning: $16.8 million would be wired to Eastern Europe and the two thieves would vanish with new identities.But in the end, it was a Baltimore bank teller and a security officer just doing their jobs that foiled a high-tech international money-laundering scheme."Something didn't look quite right," said Richard Parker, the security officer for NationsBank who helped identify a series of suspicious transactions in September 1996 that sparked an overseas "cyberbanking" investigation.

Couple and their mothers plead guilty in drug case A 29-year-old man, his girlfriend and both of their mothers have pleaded guilty in Baltimore's U.S. District Court to federal charges for their roles in an Eastern Shore cocaine ring, authorities said. Ronald Seldon of Salisbury pleaded guilty Monday to conspiracy to distribute 5 kilograms or more of cocaine and money laundering, in a deal just before his scheduled trial before Judge J. Frederick Motz. He could receive a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison or up to life in prison and a $4 million fine.

I am deeply concerned about the process being used to alter the county school board. Our county executive says he does not like the way the school board is acting and wants to change the way the school board is constituted. To validate his viewpoint, he appointed a commission dominated by people with the same viewpoint as his. Then, when they recommend exactly what he wanted in the first place, he claims it to be an "independent" recommendation. If there is such a thing as "money laundering," this is certainly its equivalent: "politics laundering.

A 44-year-old Baltimore pawn shop owner was sentenced Tuesday to nearly four years in federal prison followed by six months of home detention for conspiring to commit money laundering in a lengthy scheme that involved more than a dozen defendants, who used pawn shops and online auction sites to sell stolen goods, the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office announced. Michael Garonzik, who owned the We Buy pawn shop, bought stolen goods from "boosters," who shoplifted cosmetics, gift cards, DVDs, tools and other items from stores including Target, Safeway, Wal-Mart and Kohl's, according to his plea agreement.

A federal jury in Greenbelt convicted an Anne Arundel County woman and two men in connection with a $78 million mortgage scam that targeted homeowners and buyers, the U.S. attorney's office in Maryland announced Friday. Alvita Karen Gunn, 33, of Hanover; Isaac Jerome Smith, 48, of Virginia; and Michael Anthony Hickson, 48, of New York were found guilty of fraud conspiracy, wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering for their participation in the scheme while working for Metro Dream Homes.

A youth counselor for a city-funded organization that worked to reduce crime in West Baltimore was sentenced Thursday to 14 years in prison for leading a gang and organizing drug dealing, money laundering and robberies, according to the Maryland U.S. attorney's office. Federal prosecutors described Todd Duncan, 36, as the "citywide commander" of the Black Guerrilla Family, a gang founded in California in the 1960s that authorities say is responsible for selling heroin in Baltimore.

The E-Z Money pawn shop shares a block of West Patapsco Avenue with a vacant storefront, a liquor store and a used furniture shop. "We buy scrap gold coins," the sign out front says. "Top $$$ paid. " The neon sign is turned off, but the lights are on inside, where the elderly owner and his son are busy cleaning empty shelves. The father is going off to federal prison in December, though he doesn't know for how long, and on Tuesday he was busy sprucing up for a new owner. He was willing to talk — only if his name didn't appear in the newspaper — but all he wants to say is that he was duped into becoming part of a conspiracy he knew nothing about.

The "ringleader" in a scheme to sell stolen goods through Baltimore pawn shops and online auction sites pleaded guilty Monday to laundering $20 million in ill-gotten gains, the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office announced. Jerome Ira Stal, 41, is the 11 t h person to take a plea deal in the three-year conspiracy. He faces a maximum of 10 years in prison at his sentencing, scheduled for March 18. Stal and 14 other men were indicted this spring on conspiracy charges alleging that "boosters" shoplifted various items -- including beauty products, medication, DVDs and tools – from Target, Safeway, Wal-Mart and other stores, then sold the goods to pawn shops.

Fifteen men, ages 22 to 51, have been indicted by a federal grand jury in Baltimore on charges that they laundered $20 million in proceeds from stolen goods, many of them shoplifted from pharmacies and stores such as Walmart and Target. More than 100 officers from six agencies raided 32 locations in Baltimore and elsewhere in Maryland this week to arrest the defendants and seize evidence. The indictment demands the forfeiture of $20 million in cash and the assets of 10 businesses in Baltimore, Brooklyn, Catonsville and Annapolis, along with 58 bank accounts.

A Pakistani national who lived in Washington and Maryland pleaded guilty in federal court yesterday to conspiring to launder money and concealing terrorist funding, the U.S. Department of Justice announced yesterday. Saifullah Anjum Ranjha, 45, operated a Washington-based company called Hamza that lent money through a traditional system of money transfer called hawala, according to a statement released by the Justice Department. "As the U.S. financial industry strengthens its anti-money laundering programs, the use of the hawala system to move illicit funds becomes increasingly attractive to terrorist and other criminal organizations," James Dinkins, special agent in charge of U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, said in the statement.