Month: July 2022

Source: United States Department of Justice News

          LOS ANGELES – An Orange County man pleaded guilty today to a federal criminal charge for stalking a professional online gamer during a long-running harassment campaign.

          Evan Baltierra, 29, of Trabuco Canyon, pleaded guilty to one count of stalking, a crime that carries a statutory maximum sentence of five years in federal prison.

          According to his plea agreement, Baltierra met the victim, a prominent professional gamer, at a gaming convention in Anaheim in November 2019. After this meeting, Baltierra asked to meet the victim in her hometown in Canada, which made her feel uncomfortable. After the victim blocked Baltierra on various social media accounts, beginning in June 2020, Baltierra created hundreds of social media accounts to send the victim threatening messages. One message sent to the victim via Twitter in January 2021 read in part, “[t]imes ticking…waiting for the right opportunity.”

          In October 2020, Baltierra hired an unknown third party through an instant messaging mobile application to create multiple photoshopped nude images of the victim that placed her face onto pornographic images. From November 2020 to March 2022, Baltierra posted the photoshopped nude images to multiple pornographic websites and internet forums. He also sent the images to the victim’s friends and family. Baltierra also posted links to the images on various social media websites and told others online to search for the victim’s name to see naked pictures of her.

          The victim obtained a temporary restraining order against Baltierra in January 2021. After the protective order was served on him, Baltierra began posting the victim’s personal information – including her real name and city of residence, which were listed on the protective order – to social media websites and during her live video game streams. Baltierra also posted the victim’s Twitter handle to pornographic websites along with the photoshopped nude images he had created.

          During the victim’s live streams of video games, Baltierra used multiple accounts to continually post harassing messages. Baltierra’s spamming of the victim made it impossible for her to stream herself playing video games and forced her to stop streaming in February 2021.

          In June 2021, two months after Baltierra and the victim reached a settlement in which he agreed to not contact her or her family and friends in exchange for the victim dissolving the temporary restraining order, Baltierra called the victim’s local police department. In that phone call, Baltierra requested the police conduct a welfare check of the victim by lying to the police that the victim had made threats online that she was going to commit suicide. Baltierra also attempted to obtain the victim’s home address during that phone call. The police later visited the victim’s home for a welfare check.

          From January 2022 to March 2022, Baltierra sent threatening messages to the victim via various social media accounts, including one messages that read, “get a casket ready.” In March 2022, Baltierra wrote a letter to the parents of the victim’s boyfriend, which stated, in part, that the situation was going to end badly for her.

          Baltierra also admitted to sending the victim an unsolicited suspicious package in March 2022 that later was determined to contain a box of condoms.

          United States District Judge Fernando M. Olguin scheduled an October 20 sentencing hearing in this case.

          The FBI investigated this matter.

          Assistant United States Attorney Jake D. Nare of the Santa Ana Branch Office is prosecuting this case.

Source: United States Department of Justice News

PHOENIX, Ariz. – On July 8, 2022, Jay Derek Ramirez Ramirez, 21, of Phoenix, Arizona, was sentenced by United States District Judge Susan M. Brnovich to 12 months and one day in prison. His brother, Juan Ali Ramirez Ramirez, 23, also of Phoenix, was sentenced on June 22, 2022, to 36 months in prison by Judge Brnovich. Both brothers previously pleaded guilty to Dealing Firearms Without a License.

In July and August 2020, the Ramirez brothers bought and sold at least 40 firearms for profit. Included in those 40 firearms were AR-type rifles, shotguns, Glock handguns, a stolen firearm, and a Privately Made Firearm (ghost gun), as well as an inert grenade, suppressors, body armor, and high-capacity magazines. Some of the firearms the brothers purchased and resold have been connected to crimes in the valley or were found in the hands of prohibited possessors. The Ramirez brothers advertised firearms for sale on social media and sold them out of their family tire shop.

This case was prosecuted as part of the joint federal, state, and local Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) Program, the centerpiece of the Department of Justice’s violent crime reduction efforts. PSN is an evidence-based program proven to be effective at reducing violent crime. 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.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Tobacco, assisted by the Phoenix Police Department, conducted the investigation in this case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Coleen Schoch, District of Arizona, Phoenix, handled the prosecution.

CASE NUMBER:           CR-20-00512-SMB
RELEASE NUMBER:    2022-114_Ramirez Ramirez

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For more information on the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Arizona, visit http://www.justice.gov/usao/az/

Follow the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Arizona, on Twitter @USAO_AZ for the latest news.

Source: United States Department of Justice

Today, the Justice Department recognized the first anniversary of the President’s  Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy,  and celebrated  the Antitrust Division’s most productive year of interagency competition policy engagement in recent history. The Executive Order underscored that competition is a cornerstone of the American economy, and called for a whole-of-government response to “excessive market concentration threaten[ing] basic economic liberties [and] democratic accountability.”

“The Executive Order has created unprecedented opportunities for the Division to work with partner agencies to promote competition policy,” said Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. “Through public advances in our partnerships and numerous enforcement collaborations, the Executive Order has driven meaningful and widespread benefits to competition in the American economy.”

In the last year, the department has established and expanded relationships with close to a dozen federal agencies. department staff attorneys and economists have provided technical assistance, helped to draft key reports on competition and entered into memoranda of understanding to improve the exchange of information and cooperation on enforcement efforts. The department has publicly announced expanded partnerships with the  Department of Agriculture, the Federal Maritime Commission and the Department of Labor. The department has also submitted formal comments to several agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board and the Surface Transportation Board to ensure they consider the effects on competition of certain rulemaking efforts.

The department is undertaking efforts to review and revise a variety of competition policy documents to ensure its approaches protect competition with the vigor the law demands. Following a robust public outreach campaign during which the agencies received over 5,000 comments and heard from hundreds of other Americans affected by consolidation in industries ranging from hospitals to grocery stores, work is well underway to revise the merger guidelines. Last month, the department, along with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, announced the withdrawal of a widely-criticized 2019 policy statement on remedies related to standards-essential patents, in order to better serve innovation and competition. The withdrawal statement underscored that the division would apply a case-by-case approach to scrutinizing conduct that threatens to stifle competition.

As the Executive Order shifts into its second year, the department is focused on institutionalizing and routinizing its newly expanded interagency partnerships. The division remains committed to continued cooperation with its partner agencies in the ongoing implementation of the Executive Order and related interagency efforts to promote competitive markets.

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

Hoy, en el Instituto de Estudios Judiciales (JSI) en San Juan, Puerto Rico, la Honorable Sonia Sotomayor, Jueza Asociada de la Corte Suprema de los Estados Unidos, se dirigió virtualmente a 24 jueces de Colombia, República Dominicana, El Salvador, México y Panamá como parte de un programa de capacitación del Departamento de Justicia (DOJ) para los jueces del hemisferio occidental.  La jueza Sotomayor destacó la importancia de sus contribuciones al estado de derecho en el hemisferio occidental y los elogió por su papel en la transformación de la justicia latinoamericana.

Con el apoyo de la jueza Sotomayor, y en colaboración con la Oficina de Asuntos Internacionales de Narcóticos y Aplicación de la Ley del Departamento de Estado, la Oficina de Desarrollo, Asistencia y Capacitación Fiscal (OPDAT) del Departamento de Justicia lanzó la JSI en 2012 como respuesta a la ola de reformas del sector de la justicia en América Latina, durante la cual muchos países hicieron la transición de sistemas de justicia inquisitoriales a acusatorios.  A través de la instrucción en español, los ejercicios prácticos y la observación de los procesos judiciales, los jueces participantes aprendieron sobre las directrices probatorias, el papel de los jueces, la gestión de la sala de audiencias en un sistema de justicia acusatorio, contrabando humano y el juicio sin perspectiva de género, entre otros temas importantes.

Este desarrollo de competencias es fundamental para la región, ya que existen diferencias significativas entre los dos sistemas.  Por ejemplo, en un sistema inquisitivo, los jueces investigan los cargos y determinan la culpabilidad mediante deliberaciones escritas a puerta cerrada.  En un sistema acusatorio, el juez actúa como un árbitro imparcial responsable de sopesar las pruebas y garantizar los derechos de la víctima y del acusado en una sala abierta. El JSI ofrece a los homólogos judiciales la oportunidad de aprender habilidades prácticas, animando a los ex alumnos del JSI a convertirse en agentes de cambio dentro de sus judicaturas.   Muchos ex alumnos de la JSI formados por el Departamento de Justicia han podido actuar como multiplicadores de fuerza en la región, impartiendo su formación en su propio poder judicial y en futuros programas de la OPDAT.

Desde el establecimiento de la JSI en 2012, el OPDAT y sus socios de las facultades de derecho de la Universidad de Puerto Rico y la Universidad Interamericana, el Poder Judicial del Estado de Puerto Rico y el Poder Judicial Federal de Estados Unidos han capacitado a más de 1.000 jueces latinoamericanos. Este año se cumple el décimo aniversario de este importante y sostenible proyecto.

Por favor, visite https://www.justice.gov/criminal-opdat para obtener más información sobre los esfuerzos de creación de competencias del OPDAT en todo el mundo.

Source: United States Department of Justice News

EL PASO – Jorge Mario Manjarrez-Reyes, 30, of El Paso, pleaded guilty today to one count of production of a visual depiction involving the sexual exploitation of a minor.

According to court documents, law enforcement officers first encountered Manjarrez-Reyes on a peer-to-peer program where he was sharing images of child pornography. Following the execution of a search warrant at the defendant’s residence on March 19, 2020, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) forensically discovered approximately 513 images and 619 videos depicting child pornography on Manjarrez-Reyes’ electronic devices. In coordination with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, HSI later learned that one of the pornographic videos had been created by Manjarrez-Reyes.

By pleading guilty, Manjarrez-Reyes admitted that he knowingly used and coerced a four-year-old victim to take part in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing visual depictions of that abuse.

A sentencing date has not been set.  Manjarrez-Reyes faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

U.S. Attorney Ashley C. Hoff and HSI Special Agent in Charge Frank Burrola, El Paso Division, made the announcement.

HSI El Paso’s Cyber Crimes Group investigated the case.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Winters is prosecuting the case.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and CEOS, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.

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