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Chinese woman pleads guilty in college test-taking scheme
Attorney News |
2015/11/01 07:47
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A Chinese woman pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiring to have two other women take college admissions examinations in her place to help her get accepted to Virginia Tech.
Yue Zou acknowledged having her boyfriend contact a China-based test-taking service.
After that happened, Zou, of Blacksburg, Virginia, supplied her passport information through an online network known as QQ Chat, which enabled people in China to create in her name phony passports that were shipped to her in the United States.
On the passports were the photos of two other Chinese women, who took tests in the Pittsburgh area while pretending to be her.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jimmy Kitchen told the judge that Zou forwarded results from the Test of English as a Foreign Language, or TOEFL, to Virginia Tech in November 2013 and results of a Scholastic Aptitude Test, or SAT, taken by another Chinese impostor in March 2014.
Zou, from Hegang, a city in the Chinese province of Heilongjiang, paid an unspecified sum for the TOEFL and $2,000 for the SAT, Kitchen told a judge in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh.
Zou, 21, faces up to five years in prison when she's sentenced in February. She could also be deported, though that will be handled by federal immigration officials in a separate proceeding.
Federal authorities haven't explained how they learned of the scheme.
Zou's attorney, Lyle Dresbold, told the judge that Zou will remain confined to her Blacksburg apartment with an electronic monitoring bracelet until she's sentenced. He told the judge she's still enrolled at Virginia Tech.
University spokesman Mark Owczarski said he could not comment on her status. But he said students found to have submitted work that is not their own to gain admission would face a range of possible sanctions, including expulsion, under the university's honor code.
Zou's TOEFL test was taken by Yunlin Sun, 24, of Berlin, Somerset County. She pleaded guilty in August and faces sentencing in December. Prosecutors say Ning Wei, from Taiyuan, in the Chinese province of Shanxi, took Zou's SAT. She hasn't been arrested, and prosecutors say they believe she returned to China.
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Supreme Court won't reinstate $250K award in police shooting
Legal Marketing |
2015/10/20 15:10
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The Supreme Court will not reinstate a $250,000 award to the father of a suspected marijuana user in Maryland who was killed by police in a middle-of the-night raid.
The justices on Monday left in place a court ruling that overturned the jury award in the death of Andrew Cornish in 2005. A SWAT team entered Cornish's apartment in Cambridge,
Maryland, at 4:30 a.m. with a search warrant to look for marijuana.
The jury found that police violated Cornish's constitutional rights by failing to "knock and announce" their presence before going inside.
A lawsuit filed by Andrew Kane over his son's death argued that Cornish was awakened by the intrusion, grabbed a knife for protection and was shot in the head seconds later.
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Federal court programs aim to keep defendants out of prison
Headline Legal News |
2015/10/19 15:10
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Angelique Chacon had emotionally girded herself to spend six years behind bars for selling methamphetamine when her attorney gave her a way out — a new rehabilitation program in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles that might allow her to avoid prison.
Chacon, 31, a former methamphetamine user herself, accepted the pre-trial offer, got a part-time job, took classes at a technical school and graduated from the rehab program last year with a sentence of probation instead of prison.
"I'm a totally different person," she said. "I'm sober. I'm more involved with my family. I'm really there mentally."
Chacon is among hundreds of federal defendants accused of low-level crimes such as smuggling or selling small amounts of drugs who have avoided prison time in recent years with the help of court programs that focus on rehabilitation. Many of the programs offer counseling and treatment for addictions.
About a dozen federal district courts across the country have so-called pre-trial diversion programs — most launched within the past five years. The federal court system in California also has such a program in San Diego and is getting ready to launch another in San Francisco.
"The trend has really taken off," said Mark Sherman, an assistant director with the Federal Judicial Center, the research and education agency of the federal judiciary. "There's a hunger in our system to engage in meaningful criminal justice work, and this is one way of doing it."
Many of the programs function like state drug courts, where defendants with substance abuse problems receive treatment and counseling. Still others focus on young defendants with no requirement that they have drug addictions. Regardless, judges, prosecutors and pre-trial service officers say the goals are the same: To help people overcome obstacles that contributed to their crimes and save money by keeping them out of prison.
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Britain's High Court rules that Uber app is lawful
Court Watch |
2015/10/18 00:35
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Britain's High Court has ruled that the Uber app to hail minicabs is lawful ? a blow to London's famous black cab drivers, who argued that it violated city regulations.
The court's decision Friday came after Transport for London sought clarification as to whether the San Francisco-based company's app worked in the same way as meters used by the strictly regulated black cabs.
The Licensed Taxi Drivers' Association argued the app ? which records a car's location and travel time and feeds it back to servers in California ? worked like a meter.
But Justice Duncan Ouseley disagreed, ruling that the app relies on GPS signals and did not operate in the same way.
Uber has come under fire in several European countries, including France, Italy and Spain.
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'Whitey' Bulger's lover heads to court on contempt charge
Court News |
2015/10/17 15:10
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The longtime girlfriend and fugitive companion of James "Whitey" Bulger is expected in federal court to face a contempt charge for refusing to tell whether other people helped the Boston mobster during his 16 years on the run.
Catherine Greig is scheduled to make an initial appearance on the new charge Monday in U.S. District Court.
Greig, 64, already is serving an eight-year sentence for conspiracy to harbor a fugitive, identity fraud and conspiracy to commit identity fraud.
The indictment alleges that from December 2014 until last month, Greig disobeyed a judge's order to testify before a grand jury in an investigation into "third parties" who assisted and harbored Bulger.
Bulger, now 86, fled Boston just before being indicted in early 1995. He was one of the FBI's most wanted fugitives until he was captured in Santa Monica, California, in 2011. He and Greig had been living together in a rent-controlled apartment.
When Greig was sentenced on the original charges in 2012, her lawyer, Kevin Reddington, said Greig was in love with Bulger when she fled with him and did not believe that Bulger was capable of murder.
In 2013, Bulger was convicted of playing a role in 11 murders and other charges in a sweeping racketeering indictment.
Prosecutors said Greig had numerous opportunities to leave Bulger during their time on the run. Instead, they said she helped him remain a fugitive by using false identities and posing as his wife so she could pick up his prescriptions.
The couple posed as married retirees from Chicago. After they were captured, authorities found a stash of more than $800,000 in cash and 30 weapons in their apartment.
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