20 Jul
Posted by Zac Croft as Law and Legal Topics
Rangers recently seized 3,500 marijuana plants in the Santa Monica Mountains, the National Park Service reported Tuesday.
Authorities found nine separate pot gardens in late June in Malibu’s Zuma-Trancas Canyon area, said Lauren Newman, a spokeswoman for the park service. The street value of the seized drugs was estimated at $10.5 million, she said.
Officials also found herbicides, pesticides, rodent fencing and 2 miles of plastic hose over 9.6 acres of parkland, which was being irrigated with water from a nearby creek, officials said.
Authorities spent two weeks hauling pot and trash out of the area and working to restore it to its natural state.
Tampa, FL — Twelve people from the Tampa Bay area were arrested Wednesday for their part in a nationwide drug trafficking and money laundering operation.
An investigation led by ICE Homeland Security Investigations, the DEA, TPD and numerous local agencies, arrested 19 in total from California and Florida seizing more than $1.5 million in cash and six luxury vehicles.
Gallery: Tampa arrests and property seizures
The men arrested include:
According to the indictments, beginning in at least 2009 through June of 2011, the men sold cocaine, methamphetamine, and marijuana and laundered their drug money.
If convicted on all counts, each faces a mandatory minimum of ten years in federal prison and a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
19 Jul
Posted by Zac Croft as Law and Legal Topics
HAMILTON — A teen accused of plotting with two men to break into her Liberty Twp. home and rob her mother at gunpoint will remain behind bars until at least next month.
The 16-year-old girl, who is charged with complicity to aggravated robbery and theft, appeared in Butler County Juvenile Court on Monday for a detention hearing. Judge Ronald Craft ordered that she remain housed in the county juvenile detention center until a pre-trial hearing set for Aug. 8.
No plea was entered.
Sheriff’s detectives say the girl was furious with her mother and conspired with Ed C. Willis and Dan McElroy, both 21 and from Cincinnati, to break into the Elderberry Court residence.
The girl’s mother and father were both in court, and when given a chance to talk with them after the hearing, the girl approached her father and they embraced while she teared up. Her m
Former Rangipo prison guard Manu Jensen has been jailed for one year four months on corruption charges.
Jensen, 45, was sentenced in Rotorua District Court after pleading guilty in May to two charges of corruption after admitting smuggling cannabis and eye drops to a prisoner at Tongariro-Rangipo Prison, in the central North Island south of Turangi, in 2009.
19 Jul
Posted by Zac Croft as Law and Legal Topics
A Mexican serial rapist, named Florida’s most-wanted fugitive, was arrested on Friday in Waco, Texas, by officers with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Enforcement Removal Operations (ERO).
ICE Fugitive Operations Team members in Waco along, with the U.S. Marshals Service, arrested Jose Fernando Aguirre-Jaramillo, 44, a native and citizen of Mexico who is wanted in Hardee County, Florida, on multiple rape charges.
According to the Hardee County Sheriff’s Office, Aguirre-Jaramillo is a serial rapist, and is the number-one fugitive on the Florida Department of Corrections Most Wanted list. Aguirre-Jaramillo’s criminal history includes a 1987 conviction for possessing marijuana. The court ordered him to six months in jail. Th Read all post…