Month: May 2022

Source: United States Department of Justice News

Baltimore, Maryland – Tony Oliver, age 42, of Maryland, pleaded guilty yesterday to being a felon in possession of a firearm.    

The guilty plea was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Erek L. Barron; Special Agent in Charge Toni M. Crosby of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) Baltimore Field Division; and Commissioner Michael Harrison of the Baltimore Police Department. 

According to his guilty plea, on June 28, 2019, Oliver and Oliver’s friend (Victim 1) were shot on the 1400 block of Ward Street in Baltimore.  Based on CCTV cameras, statements, and jail calls, investigators learned that two male suspects first approached Victim 1 and shot him in the head and chest on the 1400 block of Ward Street.  As Oliver approached the area in his vehicle, the male suspects shot at Oliver, hitting him in his hand and arm.  Investigators later recovered multiple pieces of evidence at the scene including a trail of blood, a 9mm firearm, and 9mm shell casings from inside Oliver’s car.

As part of the investigation, officers located the 9mm firearm under a bush at the scene.  In a video viewed by law enforcement, officers saw Oliver near the bush in which the 9mm firearm was located.  BPD homicide detectives subsequently recovered the firearm, tested the firearm for Oliver’s DNA, and discovered Oliver’s DNA on the firearm.  Oliver knew that he had previously been convicted of a felony and was prohibited from possessing a firearm. 

Additionally, as detailed in his guilty plea, the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) requested Oliver’s cellphone pending a search and seizure warrant.  However, before giving the phone to the detectives, Oliver purposely threw it on the ground and broke it.  Due to the damage to the phone, investigators were unable to retrieve information from the cellphone.  The phone was believed to contain information regarding Victim 1’s murder.

Investigators subsequently captured several conversations between Oliver and an incarcerated individual (Individual 1) in which Oliver and Individual 1 discussed the shooting.  For example, on July 11, 2019, in a conversation between Oliver and Individual 1, investigators believed that Oliver described the circumstances leading to the shooting, including how Oliver was driving the vehicle, parked next to a corner store, and tossed his firearm immediately after the shooting, and that Oliver believed that another individual recovered the firearm from the

scene because an associate of Oliver’s could not locate the firearm when Oliver sent the associate to retrieve it.  Based on the call, Oliver did not believe that law enforcement recovered the firearm.

Oliver faces a maximum of 10 years in federal prison followed by 3 years of supervised release for being a felon in possession of a firearm. U.S. District Judge George L. Russell III has scheduled sentencing for August 19, 2022, at 9:30 a.m.

This case was made possible by investigative leads generated from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’ (ATF) National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN). NIBIN is the only national network that allows for the capture and comparison of ballistic evidence to aid in solving and preventing violent crimes involving firearms. NIBIN is a proven investigative and intelligence tool that can link firearms from multiple crime scenes, allowing law enforcement to quickly disrupt shooting cycles. For more information on NIBIN, visit https://www.atf.gov/firearms/national-integrated-ballistic-information-network-nibin. 

This case is part of Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), a program bringing together all levels of law enforcement and the communities they serve to reduce violent crime and make our neighborhoods safer for everyone. PSN, an evidence-based program proven to be effective at reducing violent crime, is the centerpiece of the Department of Justice’s violent crime reduction efforts.  Through PSN, a broad spectrum of stakeholders work together to identify the most pressing violent crime problems in the community and develop comprehensive solutions to address them. As part of this strategy, PSN focuses enforcement efforts on the most violent offenders and partners with locally based prevention and reentry programs for lasting reductions in crime.

United States Attorney Erek L. Barron commended the ATF and BPD for their work in the investigation. Mr. Barron thanked Assistant U.S. Attorney LaRai Everett, who is prosecuting the case.

For more information on the Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office, its priorities, and resources available to help the community, please visit www.justice.gov/usao-md and https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/community-outreach. 

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Source: United States Department of Justice News

Defendant Also Admitted Possessing a Firearm in Furtherance of His Drug Trafficking

Source: United States Department of Justice News

A former California man made a court appearance earlier this week after being apprehended and deported from Costa Rica, so that he could be sentenced by a federal judge on his U.S. conviction for tax crimes.

In December 2000, Robin J. McPherson, formerly of San Diego, and two co-conspirators were found guilty at trial of conspiring to defraud the IRS and tax evasion. According to evidence presented at trial, McPherson was the President, Chief Operating Officer and co-owner of Continental Wireless Cable Inc., a telemarketing company that sold more than $30 million in purported partnership interests in wireless cable systems before being shut down by the Securities and Exchange Commission. McPherson and his co-conspirators took steps to evade paying taxes on profits earned by Continental Wireless Cable Inc., causing a tax loss to the IRS of more than $1 million in taxes.

Following McPherson’s trial conviction in 2000, the district court ordered him and his co-defendants to appear for sentencing in March 2001. Instead, McPherson fled the United States and did not return for the sentencing hearing.

“It is fitting that Robin McPherson was arrested and returned to the United States to be sentenced on his tax crime convictions,” said Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart M. Goldberg of the Justice Department’s Tax Division. “While honest Americans are paying their fair share this filing season, they will be reminded that the department and IRS will ensure that those who have defrauded the IRSs are held fully accountable, no matter how long it takes.”

“This defendant dodged both his taxes and his sentencing hearing,” said U.S. Attorney Randy S. Grossman for the Southern District of California. “Thanks to the FBI and Costa Rican authorities, he’ll now be held responsible for both.”

“The defendant was convicted for his role in a complex financial fraud scheme in 2000 and fled the U.S. before he was sentenced,” said Special Agent in Charge Stacey Moy of the FBI’s San Diego Field Office. “This international arrest and deportation, more than two decades later, should serve as notice to FBI fugitives worldwide – neither time nor distance will deter the FBI from tracking down wanted fugitives and holding them accountable in U.S. courts. The FBI is proud to work alongside IRS-Criminal Investigation, and I specifically want to thank the FBI’s Legal Attaché Office in Panama City for their outstanding work in coordinating with local authorities in Costa Rica to locate and arrest the defendant.”      

“It has been more than 20 years since the defendant was convicted in federal court for tax crimes,” said Special Agent in Charge Ryan L. Korner of IRS-Criminal Investigation. “After eluding the authorities as a fugitive, McPherson was finally caught and is now being brought back to the United States to face his crimes. Criminals may think that they can run and evade justice, but we as a law enforcement agency will continue to hold them accountable.”

McPherson is scheduled to be sentenced at a later date. McPherson faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison on each of the conspiracy and tax evasion counts. He also faces a period of supervised release, restitution and monetary penalties. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

McPherson is also wanted to stand trial in the District of Oregon for fraud and money laundering charges. In October 2020, McPherson was charged by criminal complaint in the District of Oregon for his role in a fraud scheme in which he allegedly solicited $1.2 million in investments from victims in a fake Costa Rican real estate development opportunity. McPherson allegedly used investor funds to pay for various personal expenses including his own mortgage.

The United States is grateful to the Government of Costa Rica for its cooperation and support in apprehending McPherson, as well as the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs, the U.S. Marshals Service and the FBI Legat Panama City.

IRS-Criminal Investigation conducted the investigation. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California provided significant assistance.

Former Tax Division trial attorneys Danny N. Roetzel and Lori A. Hendrickson prosecuted the case.

A criminal complaint is merely an allegation, and the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

Source: United States Department of Justice News

Greenbelt, Maryland – U.S. District Judge Paul W. Grimm sentenced Francis Arthur, age 35, of Silver Spring, Maryland on May 2, 2022, to one year and a day in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release, for a money laundering conspiracy and for money laundering in connection with a scheme to defraud victim account holders at a credit union.  As part of his sentence, Arthur has been ordered to pay $339,000 in restitution.

The sentence was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Erek L. Barron; Special Agent in Charge Matthew R. Stohler of the U.S. Secret Service Washington Field Office; and Chief Marcus Jones of the Montgomery County Department of Police.

According to the evidence presented at Arthur’s trial, from October 2016 through April 2017, Arthur and his co-conspirators engaged in financial transactions designed to conceal the nature, source and ownership of the proceeds of a fraud scheme to obtain cash from victim account holders at a Maryland credit union.  Specifically, the evidence showed that the conspirators transferred, withdrew cash, and caused cashiers’ checks to be issued from the proceeds of a fraud scheme.  Arthur and his co-conspirators then used the funds to purchase motor vehicles to conceal that the funds were derived from a fraud scheme. 

United States Attorney Erek L. Barron commended the U.S. Secret Service and the Montgomery County Department of Police for their work in the investigation.  Mr. Barron thanked Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas M. Sullivan and U.S. Attorney Christian Nauvel of the Department of Justice’s Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section, who prosecuted the case.

For more information on the Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office, its priorities, and resources available to help the community, please visit www.justice.gov/usao-md and https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/community-outreach.

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Source: United States Department of Justice News

Baltimore, Maryland – Eugene Andrew DiNoto, age 51, of Bel Air, Maryland, pleaded guilty yesterday to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, engaging in an illegal monetary transaction, and filing a false tax return, in connection with a kickback scheme that defrauded his employer of more than $29 million.    

The guilty plea was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Erek L. Barron; Special Agent in Charge Thomas J. Sobocinski of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Baltimore Field Office; and Special Agent in Charge Darrell J. Waldon of the Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigation, Washington, D.C. Field Office.

According to his guilty plea, Eugene DiNoto was a longtime employee of Company 1, a family-owned global business headquartered in New York, but with manufacturing facilities in Belcamp and Abingdon, Maryland, both in Harford County.  Beginning in 2012, DiNoto and another employee, Elliott Kleinman, began to use their management positions at Company 1 to execute a fraudulent billing scheme whereby they would get illegal kickbacks from various drum vendors doing business with Company 1, which used drums to store and transport its products.  As the facility managers, DiNoto and Kleinman oversaw the purchasing and storing of drums for use at the Harford County manufacturing facilities.  They also had authority to review drum invoices and authorize payments to the drum vendors. 

Anthony P. Urcioli, Sr., is the owner and President of Tunnel, Barrel & Drum Co, Inc. (TBD), located in Carlstadt, New Jersey, and of another drum supply company called Hartford Fibre Drum, Inc. (Hartford), both of which did business with Company 1.  After TBD became a drum supplier to Company 1, DiNoto and Kleinman entered into arrangement with Urcioli whereby TBD could continue selling drums to Company 1 if Urcioli agreed to fraudulently invoice Company 1 for more drums than TBD actually sold and delivered to the company.  If Urcioli agreed to falsify its invoices in this way, DiNoto and Kleinman said that they and TBD could split the extra money Company 1 paid TBD for the made-up drum deliveries 50/50.  DiNoto told Urcioli that he would split his share of the kickbacks with Elliot Kleinman 75/25.  Urcioli agreed to participate in the false billing scheme.  

From approximately January 2012 to January 31, 2020, DiNoto contacted Urcioli at least once a week to discuss the number and type of drums that he actually wanted delivered to Company 1’s Maryland facilities.  During the same conversation, DiNoto told Urcioli how many additional drums to charge, but not deliver, to Company 1 from TBD, and later from Hartford, Urcioli’s other company.  After Urcioli created the invoices that fraudulently billed Company 1 for both delivered and undelivered drums, DiNoto approved the invoices and sent them to Company 1’s headquarters to be paid.  

Urcioli also created a handwritten purchase order ticket that summarized the breakdown of actual and bogus drum orders and how the kickback amounts were calculated.  Urcioli would put a copy of the purchase order ticket in an envelope along with DiNoto’s and Kleinman’s share of the kickback amount payable via checks from TBD and Hartford, and then send the envelope to their personal residences in Harford County, Maryland. 

Sometimes, the invoices were not written as DiNoto had instructed, and he would call Urcioli and tell him to send a corrected invoice of adjust the kickback amounts.  Occasionally, DiNoto would correct an arithmetic mistake on Urcioli’s purchase order ticket, take a photograph of the changes he made to the ticket, and then email the corrected ticket back to Urcioli.

Urcioli wanted to pay the kickbacks to DiNoto and Kleinman by check so the payments would look like payments to drum wholesalers and be deductible as a cost of goods sold on TBD’s tax returns.  DiNoto told Urcioli to make his kickback checks payable to a company linked to DiNoto, called “Sandpiper Enterprises.”  Kleinman advised that he wanted his kickback checks payable to a company he formed called “EDK Management, LTD.”  Urcioli agreed, and in addition to making the kickback checks drawn on TBD and Hartford accounts payable to those companies, Urcioli wrote the word “drums” on the checks to further the pretense of legitimate purchases.

DiNoto admitted that even though Sandpiper Enterprises was not engaged in any business, he maintained a commercial bank account for Sandpiper Enterprises at a local financial institution, where he deposited all the kickback checks he received.  Before accessing the criminal proceeds, DiNoto routinely transferred all or part of the money into one of the personal bank accounts he maintained at the same bank.  DiNoto would then withdraw the funds from his personal account or write a personal check against the balance.          

Between January 2012 and January 31, 2020, Urcioli falsely invoiced Company 1 a total of $20,300,757.  TBD and Hartford kept half that amount while the remaining funds were sent to DiNoto and Kleinman.  DiNoto’s share of the kickbacks was approximately $7,071,106.  Over the same eight-year period, DiNoto used other drum vendors besides TBD and Hartford to execute his scheme to defraud Company 1.  On behalf of those other vendors, DiNoto submitted and approved invoices totaling approximately $9,197,181, resulting in a total loss to Company 1 of approximately $29,497,938.

For the period of 2017 through 2019, none of the more than $7 million in kickbacks DiNoto received for his role in the fraudulent billing scheme appeared as income on the tax returns DiNoto filed with the IRS, resulting in a loss to the U.S. government of approximately $1,374,694.

DiNoto faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for conspiracy to commit wire fraud; a maximum of 10 years in federal prison for engaging in an illegal monetary transaction; and a maximum of five years in federal prison for filing a false tax return.  U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby scheduled sentencing for DiNoto on July 13, 2022 at 2:00 p.m.

Elliott Dennis Kleinman, age 68, of Bel Air, Maryland and Anthony P. Urcioli, Sr., age 78, of Park Ridge, New Jersey, previously pleaded guilty to their roles in the scheme and are awaiting sentencing.

United States Attorney Erek L. Barron commended the FBI and IRS-CI for their work in the investigation.  Mr. Barron thanked Assistant U.S. Attorneys Martin J. Clarke and Harry M. Gruber, who are prosecuting the case.

For more information on the Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office, its priorities, and resources available to report fraud, please visit www.justice.gov/usao-md and https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/report-fraud.

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