SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — More people charged with federal crimes in Utah could get treatment instead of prison under a new program designed to prevent repeat offenses by addressing the reasons why they commit crimes.
The program is aimed at defendants without long criminal histories or those struggling with substance abuse. People would have to plead guilty to charges before they enter the program. Participation is voluntary, and getting into the program is expected to be competitive.
If they complete the requirements successfully, defendants could see charges dismissed, or they could be put on probation rather than be sent to prison. People who fail will be sentenced under terms they agreed to before entering the program.
The program was designed by a team that included federal prosecutors, defense attorneys, probation agents and judges. It was approved this summer, and officials are expected to meet this month to select the first eight to 12 participants.
“I’m not talking about giving a break to the kingpins,” said U.S. Attorney for Utah John Huber. “I’m talking about people on the fringe who … have a heroin addiction, have a meth addiction, and they’re just trying to get to their next fix.”
Defendants who are picked will be separated into two groups, one for people with little to no criminal history accused of crimes like credit card fraud or minor narcotics offenses.
The second group will be people whose behavior appears to be motivated by drug and alcohol problems facing allegations like mail theft or bank robberies not involving a gun. Some of them will likely have criminal histories.
The program will be overseen by U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby. The defendants will be closely supervised and have to make regular appearances before the team of court authorities as well as being required to complete treatment for things like substance abuse, mental illness or education.
Their participation will last one to two years.
Huber said repeat offenders are costly for the court system and the community.
“If I don’t have to, I don’t want to prosecute someone two and three times over. That’s really a big investment of taxpayer resources on a problem that’s kind of a revolving door,” he said.
While Utah state courts have had a similar system for years, it’s a relatively concept in the federal system.
“The federal system has always been seen as very harsh,” said Greg Petersen, the probation officer in the fledgling program. “This is an opportunity for those people who are charged with federal crimes to get a little bit of a second chance.”
When it came to naming the program, Huber wanted something that would be a positive message in acronym form, so they came up with Utah Alternatives to Conviction Track or U-ACT.
As the court team put together the framework, they studied a similar program in federal court in California.
Some defendants won’t be eligible for the program, including those facing child pornography charges, people deeply involved with major fraud or narcotics distribution, those who could be deported or people accused of specific violent acts.
Officials are searching for a Texas Mexican Mafia gang member with ties to Dallas who is wanted on a kidnapping charge and parole violation.
Johnny Garcia, 35, was last living in Kirby and has ties to Dallas, San Antonio and the Bexar County area, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Bexar County issued a warrant for his arrest in May related to the kidnapping of a female associate, according to DPS.
Garcia was convicted of assaulting a public servant when he was in prison in 2006 and sentenced to eight years. He punched and kicked a corrections officer, striking him on the head and face several times with the officer’s radio, according to DPS.
He also has convictions for assault, weapons offenses and drugs. He was paroled in 2014.
Garcia is 5-10 and weighs about 210 pounds. He has numerous tattoos, including “Mexicano” on his neck, “XIII” on his abdomen, “Garcia” on his back, Pancho Villa on his left arm and a tear drop near his left eye. He may go by the nicknames “Johnny Loco” or “Red Dog,” which he has tattooed on his left leg.
A $7,500 cash reward is being offered for information leading to his capture.
To be eligible for the reward, tipsters must provide information either by calling Crime Stoppers at 1-800-252-8477, texting the letters DPS followed by the tip to 274637, or submitting a tip through the DPS website, Facebook or the DPS mobile app. All tips are anonymous.
Erdogan told RAI television that the probe by prosecutors in the northern city of Bologna, where Bilal had been studying, might affect bilateral links. Erdogan, criticised in the West for the scale of a post-coup crackdown, told RAI: “Italy should be attending to the mafia, not my son. If my son came back to Italy at this moment, he could be arrested,”
Erdogan said in an interview with the state broadcaster. “This could even cause problems for our relationship with Italy.”Bilal, 35, went to Italy in 2015 to finish a doctorate. It was not clear when he left, but a legal source said he had been back in Turkey for some time. He denies wrongdoing.
In response, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said Italy had an independent legal system and “judges answer to the Italian constitution and not the Turkish president.”The money-laundering investigation followed accusations by Murat Hakan Uzan, an exiled member of one of Turkey´s richest families and an opponent of the president, a legal source said.
Italian press reported prosecutors were looking into sums of money allegedly brought to Italy from Turkey. In July, a Bologna court allowed them to extend their investigation by six months.
Bilal’s lawyer Giovanni Trombini said his client declared that “all his economic and financial activity is totally transparent and legal, and the accusations are completely unfounded.”
Bilal, one of the Turkish president’s four children, has shipping and maritime assets and controls several oil tankers through his company and partnerships in other firms.
Herald Sun Insight Editor Keith Moor’s fifth true crime book, Busted, is being released by Penguin next week.
It reveals the inside story of the world’s biggest ecstasy haul and how the Australian Calabrian mafia nearly got away with it.
This is an extract from it.
AS police involved in the world’s biggest ecstasy bust waited for the order to kick down the door they were as confident as they could be that those occupying the Carlton apartment would be asleep.
Those about to execute the raid had the element of surprise in their favour so meeting resistance was much less likely, which further boosted their confidence.
And they were aware from a major surveillance operation the day before that the five people inside had only been in bed for a few hours after hitting the bottle hard the previous night.
But Australian Federal Police bosses — who had had been waiting for more than a year to arrest those responsible for importing 4.4 tonnes of ecstasy into Melbourne — didn’t want to risk any of the suspects getting away, or their agents being harmed, so they brought in the big guns for the pre-dawn operation.
The apartment the AFP’s elite Operations Response Group (ORG) was preparing to raid was rented by Australian Calabrian Mafia boss Pasquale Barbaro for his Melbourne mistress, Sharon Ropa.
While Barbaro’s home was his mansion in Griffith, New South Wales, he spent a lot of time shacked up with Ropa in Victoria — unbeknown to his dutiful Italian wife and four children.
Heavily armed AFP agents threw in flash grenades, which set off loud bangs and flashes of light to mimic a hail of bullets, as they smashed their way into the Little Palmerston Street unit through the front and back doors about 4am — which must have done wonders for the hangovers those inside the flat were suffering after attending a funeral and the inevitable wake the night before.
One funeral goer, Aldo Taddeo, no doubt still regrets deciding to spend the night at Barbaro and Ropa’s place after the wake; he wasn’t wanted by police and no charges were laid against him.
Not only did he get the shock of his life when the flash grenades went off, but he got another form of shock when he struggled with police and was zapped with a stun gun to stop him wrestling with one of the AFP agents.
Another of those arrested in the love nest that day, Severino Scarponi, was so scared by the dramatic entrance of the AFP agents that he literally shat himself — a bad start to what became a very crap day for him.
Barbaro’s cousin Pasquale Sergi, who came down from Griffith for the Melbourne funeral, was also arrested during that early morning raid.
He tried to hide in a bedroom cupboard, which, strangely enough, didn’t fool the AFP agents responsible for searching and securing the premises.
Ropa was naked in bed with Barbaro in the master bedroom when AFP agents burst in. The shocked couple were ordered to lie on the floor.
Police raided Barbaro’s Griffith mansion at the same time as they were smashing their way into his love nest.
Ever tactful, officers who spoke to Barbaro’s wife in Griffith that day didn’t mention the naked circumstances of her husband’s arrest in Carlton.
The AFP agents who arrested Barbaro were surprised at how unflappable and calm he remained. Despite being dragged out of bed and his whole world crumbling around him, Barbaro even found time to flirt outrageously with one of the female AFP agents.
It’s difficult to imagine that little old Melbourne is where the world’s biggest ecstasy haul was made, but it’s true.
It’s also difficult to imagine there are still people in Australia who doubt the existence of the Calabrian Mafia here — but that’s true too.
I have had access to several confidential reports prepared by Australian and Italian law-enforcement agencies, ASIO spies and US Federal Bureau of Investigation agents that should convince even the most ardent of doubters that the Calabrian Mafia is a major organised crime player in Australia.
Those documents have never been released, but their contents are revealed in Busted and they paint a graphic picture of the history of the Calabrian Mafia in Australia.
Calabria is in the toe of southern Italy and is the world headquarters of the Italian organised crime gang, ’Ndrangheta.
’Ndrangheta is known by some Italians as L’Onorata Societa (the Honoured Society) or La Famiglia (The Family).
It is simply called the Mafia by most in Australia, or the Calabrian Mafia to differentiate it from the traditional Sicilian Mafia.
’Ndrangheta eclipsed the Sicilian Mafia in the late 1990s to become the most powerful crime syndicate in Italy.
The Calabrian Mafia has a tight clan structure, often involving members marrying relations and sons taking over from ageing fathers to ‘keep it in the family’, which has made it difficult for law enforcement to penetrate.
The secret society has cells all over the world and has had a strong presence in Australia since at least the 1930s.
It is particularly prevalent in Melbourne, Mildura and Shepparton in Victoria, Griffith and Sydney in New South Wales, and Adelaide and Canberra.
It has been responsible for growing and distributing much of Australia’s marijuana for decades. It also got involved in heroin importations in 1979, through now-dead crime boss Robert Trimbole, and is known to have been involved in massive cocaine and ecstasy importations into Australia since at least 2000.
Just as it is important to have knowledge of the Calabrian Mafia to better understand the inside story of the world’s biggest ecstasy bust, it is equally important to know the backgrounds of the main players charged over the 4.4-tonne shipment.
Those players include Barbaro, Ropa, Saverio Zirilli, Rob Karam, John William, Samuel Higgs and Francesco Madafferi.
Easily the biggest of those players — and the undoubted leader of the gang responsible for importing tonnes of drugs into Australia — was Barbaro.
By the time of his 2008 arrest over the world’s biggest ecstasy bust, Barbaro was a senior Calabrian Mafia boss of international standing in the worldwide Italian secret society, and one of the biggest drug dealers Australia has ever produced.
It was Barbaro, through his senior role in the Calabrian Mafia, who had the international connections to give him access to tonnes of drugs through the Belgium-based Aquino Calabrian Mafia syndicate.
Barbaro was in regular contact with senior members of at least three of the world’s biggest international drug smuggling syndicates.
One of Barbaro’s contacts was an English criminal based in Asia who had strong connections to Chinese triad gangs; another was a Belgium-based Calabrian Mafia syndicate responsible for shipping tonnes of cocaine, ecstasy and other drugs around the world; and a third was a syndicate that specialised in making the world’s best-quality ecstasy in super labs near the Belgium — Netherlands border.
Each of the international syndicates also had something other than large scale drug dealing in common with Barbaro: a propensity to threaten and use violence.
Senior players in each of the three gangs treated Barbaro with incredible respect, a clear indication the international syndicate members considered Barbaro to be a major player on the world drug smuggling stage.
Full Article – http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/true-crime-scene/worlds-biggest-ecstasy-haul-and-the-australian-calabrian-mafia-in-keith-moors-new-book-busted/news-story/2d9bc42c77fad464d2e9c38b4d11750d
Italian prosecutor claims that the Italian Mafia is buying hash that was smuggled by ISIS through Libya.
The Italian Mafia and an Islamic terrorist group meet up at a hash-smuggling operation… It sounds like the start of a bad joke, but unfortunately, according to the anti-Mafia and antiterrorism prosecutor, Franco Roberti, it’s the grim reality in the country of Italy. The Italian prosecutor claims that hash is being purchased by the Italian Mafia from Libya, which is being smuggled in by the Islamic terrorist sect ISIS.
The North African hash is being used a major source of income for the Islamic State, and the Italian Mafia is apparently a loyal customer. It’s quite profitable for the Mafia as well, which earns about 32 billion euros ($36.10 billion) a year through their illegal drug trades, a sizable portion of which is made up of hash and cannabis. It’s seems reasonable for Roberti to assume that ISIS is heavily involved. According to Ahmad Moussalli, a political science professor at the American University in Beirut, territorial expansion by ISIS on the Syrian border has put them in control of a vast amount of cannabis fields.
Instead of trying to crack down even more viciously on Italy’s use of cannabis and hash, which the government already spends millions on combating, Roberti has come forth with a much more level-headed approach. Instead, the prosecutor believes that the time has come for Italy to rescind their harsh marijuana laws, citing that decriminalization would negatively affect both the Mafia and the Islamic State.
The decriminalization of marijuana in Italy could help land a potentially critical blow to the funding of ISIS, which according to a recently published IHS Conflict Monitor report, has already dropped from $80 million in monthly revenue to $56 million since the middle of 2015. According to Roberti, a major portion of the terrorist cell’s revenue comes from drug trafficking, and decriminalization of marijuana in Italy could help put a major dent in that.
To Roberti, it makes sense to persecute the Mafia and the Islamic State in a similar manner, seeing as that Italian Mafia families, particularly in the south, have been long proponents of terrorist activities. The Mafia and ISIS could be more intertwined than it would seem at first glance, as both are heavily dependent on drug trafficking as a revenue source. But does Roberti have a sound argument for decriminalization? I would have to argue that he does.
“We spend a lot of resources uselessly. We have not succeeded in reducing cannabinoid trafficking. On the contrary, it’s increasing,” said Roberti. “Is it worth using investigative energy to fight street sales of soft drugs?”
Full Article – https://www.merryjane.com/news/the-italian-mafia-is-funding-terrorism-by-buying-smuggled-hash-from-isis
