Court Digest

Ohio
High court to weigh end of $300 weekly unemployment payment
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The Ohio Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to decide whether Gov. Mike DeWine had the legal ability to end the state’s participation in a federal pandemic unemployment aid program ahead of a government deadline for stopping the payments.

At issue before the court is a weekly $300 federal payment for Ohioans to offset the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The federal government ended that program Sept. 6, but DeWine stopped the payments June 26, saying the need for the payments had ended.

DeWine, a Republican, followed the position of business groups that said the weekly payment was making it difficult to recruit employees. Critics of ending the payments said workers had multiple reasons why they might not be returning to jobs.

A county judge rejected a lawsuit’s claims that DeWine didn’t have the authority to stop the payments, but the 10th Ohio District Court of Appeals reversed that ruling.

Ending the program early stopped about $900 million in Ohio payments. The two parties disagree on whether that money could still be paid, should the court rule against DeWine.

The Ohio Supreme Court voted 4-2 to take the case, with Justice Patrick DeWine, the governor’s son, recusing himself to avoid the appearance of impropriety “that might result from my father’s public involvement in this case.”

California
Man gets 30 years in prison for $1B Ponzi scheme
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The owner of a San Francisco Bay Area solar energy company was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison Tuesday for an audacious Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors of $1 billion.

It’s the biggest criminal fraud scheme in the history of the federal court district that covers inland Northern California, said Acting U.S. Attorney Phillip Talbert.

Jeff Carpoff, 50, received the maximum penalty after pleading guilty in January 2020 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering. Paulette Carpoff, 47, faces up to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty at the same time to money laundering and conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States.

The couple agreed to forfeit more than $120 million in assets, including a fleet of collector cars and vacation homes in the Caribbean, Mexico, Lake Tahoe and Las Vegas purchased entirely with cash. Prosecutors said they intend to use the assets in partial restitution to victims of the fraud.

The government already auctioned off 148 vehicles, including the 1978 Firebird previously owned by late actor Burt Reynolds, netting more than $8.2 million.

The couple started DC Solar, based in Benicia, as a legitimate company that made solar generators mounted on trailers, prosecutors said. They marketed the generators between 2011 and 2018 as being able to provide emergency power for cellphone companies or to provide lighting at sporting and other events.

But prosecutors say the owners began telling investors they could benefit from federal tax credits by leasing the generators back to DC Solar, which would then provide them to other companies for their use.

In fact, prosecutors say the generators never provided much income, and early investors were paid with funds from later investors.

Carpoff and others covered up the scheme with fake financial statements and lease contracts, prosecutors said.

They eventually stopped building the mobile generators altogether, and a least half the company’s claimed 17,000 generators didn’t really exist, prosecutors said. Instead, they said Carpoff and others said the generators were in locations where they did not really exist. They traded identification number stickers on generators that had been constructed previously. And they hoodwinked investors during equipment inspections.

“He claimed to be an innovator in alternative energy, but he was really just stealing money from investors and costing the American taxpayer hundreds of millions in tax credits,” Talbert said.

The company was involved in $2.5 billion in investment transactions between 2011 and 2018, costing investors $1 billion, prosecutors said earlier. Among the investors was Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which lost some $340 million.

The Carpoffs used the money to buy and invest in more than 150 luxury cars, 32 properties, a subscription to a private jet service, a semipro baseball team, a NASCAR racecar sponsorship and a suite at the new Las Vegas Raiders stadium.

“Carpoff’s egregious scheme fueled his rapacious desire for luxury and prominence with showy, public expenditures,” said Sean Ragan, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Sacramento Field Office.

Aside from the Carpoffs, five others have pleaded guilty to related offenses and are awaiting sentencing.

Washington
Sen. Warren’s concerns over COVID-19 book draw lawsuit
SEATTLE (AP) — A small publishing company in Vermont is suing Sen. Elizabeth Warren, saying her chastising Amazon over the sale of a book that promotes misinformation about COVID-19 amounted to censorship.

The company, Chelsea Green, published a book called “The Truth About COVID-19,” which accuses the “global elite” of using the pandemic to grab “unprecedented power.”

It also promotes unproven and possibly dangerous treatments for the coronavirus, while falsely suggesting COVID-19 vaccines approved by the government have not been properly tested.

In a letter in September, the Massachusetts Democrat accused Seattle-based Amazon of peddling misinformation. Warren also issued a news release suggesting the company’s actions were “unethical, unacceptable, and potentially unlawful.”

Chelsea Green, along with the book’s authors, sued Warren in U.S. District Court in Seattle this week. Amazon was not named in the lawsuit, but the plaintiffs’ attorney wrote that the case was filed in Seattle because Warren sent the letter to Amazon.

The lawsuit says the book contains factual information and reasonable opinions protected by the First Amendment, and that Warren’s “veiled threats” that Amazon could face legal repercussions if it doesn’t stop selling the book amounted to unlawful government censorship.

The book is by Dr. Joseph Mercola, a Florida osteopath who has a long history of selling unapproved health products, and Ronnie Cummins, an activist against genetically modified food. It features a foreword by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a longtime vaccine skeptic.

The Food and Drug Administration has warned Mercola to stop offering vitamin D and other products as “safe and/or effective for the treatment or prevention of COVID-19.”

Warren’s office did not immediately return an email seeking comment Tuesday. Amazon did not reply to an inquiry about whether it had responded to Warren’s letter.

According to the lawsuit, Amazon notified Chelsea Green on Oct. 1 that it was refusing to accept ads promoting the book.

The book continued to be offered on Amazon’s website Tuesday as a best-seller in the “political freedom” category.


Mississippi
Court: Trial delays didn’t harm convict’s defense
TUPELO, Miss. (AP) — An appeals court in Mississippi has ruled against a man who said he was denied his constitutional right to e speedy trial.

Brian Berryman, 58, was arrested in February of 2017 and was sentenced to life as a habitual offender after being convicted in June 2020 for being a felon in possession of a firearm, according to a report in the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal.

 A majority of seven judges on the Mississippi State Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that, while the case took too long to come to trial, the delay didn’t harm Berryman’s ability to offer a defense.

Attorneys for the state had acknowledged that after his indictment, Berryman was “out of sight, out of mind” for a time after his indictment. The newspaper reported that Berryman was in custody at a south Mississippi prison but not arraigned and formally presented with his indictment for almost 400 days.

Multiple changes of public defenders assigned to Berryman, a judge’s illness and the COVID-19 pandemic were among other causes of trial delays.

Two judges partially dissented, not because of the trial delay but because they said there was merit to an argument that Berryman’s indictment wasn’t clear enough about the penalties he faced.

One judge fully dissented.

“The right to a speedy trial should be treated no less and no more than our sacred rights to speak our minds or to bear arms in defense of our homes, or our right to even have a trial should we be arrested,” Judge David Neil McCarty wrote in his dissent. “We should not allow a constitutional right to be fumbled away by bureaucracy and confusion, as it was in this case. Nor should its deprivation be used to oppress our citizens.”


Florida
Man sentenced to jail in public corruption probe
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A Florida businessman and developer was sentenced to three years in federal prison for his role in a corruption scheme involved a former mayor and city commissioner in the state’s capital city.

A federal judge also fined John Thomas “J.T.” Burnette $1.25 million during a sentencing hearing on Tuesday.

A jury found Burnette guilty of bribery, extortion and other charges in August following an FBI corruption probe involving former Tallahassee City Commission Scott Maddox.

Maddox was sentenced to five years in prison in September. He pleaded guilty to corruption charges and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors investigating Burnette. Maddox previously served as Tallahassee’s mayor and chairman of the Florida Democratic Party. He has also been a candidate for governor, attorney general and agriculture commissioner.


Massachusetts
Family sues after loved one’s corpse falls out of casket
LAWRENCE (AP) — A Massachusetts family whose loved one’s casket fell open as it was being lowered into a grave, causing the body to fall out, has sued the funeral home and the cemetery.

The family of Andrew Serrano, a resident of Lawrence who died in March 2019, allege negligence and reckless infliction of emotional distress in the suit filed last Wednesday in Essex Superior Court, The Eagle-Tribune reported.

During the funeral handled by the Perez Funeral Home at city-owned Bellevue Cemetery in Lawrence on April 5, 2019, “one of the side straps on the city-owned casket lowering device broke, causing Mr. Serrano’s casket to fall into the grave and break apart,” according to the suit.

The “corpse fell out of the casket” in full view of “horrified family members who became visibly distraught and hysterical,” the suit said.

The suit seeks $50,000 in damages.

Messages seeking comment were left Tuesday with the funeral home and the city.