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Tag: Bureau of Alcohol

  • FEDS: Florida Scammer Who Swindled Investment Clients And Tried To Arrange Murders Of Witness And Business Partners Sentenced To 30 Years In Federal Prison

    breakingnews72A 60-year-old Florida man who swindled retirees and ran a “sham investment firm” known as Yorkshire Financial Services with his now-deceased brother has been sentenced to 30 years in federal prison.

    Paul S. Kruse of Jacksonville plotted at least three murders after the scam was exposed, including the murder of a personal assistant who’d observed his dirty dealings, contacted the FBI and became a government witness.

    If Kruse survives the prison sentence, his release will occur when he is approximately 90 years old.

    After his brother’s 2012 suicide in the wake of the Yorkshire collapse, Kruse hired hit men to kill the personal assistant “to both prevent her from testifying and avenge his brother’s death,” the Justice Department said today.

    “Kruse also hired the hit men to rob and kill two former business partners, who Kruse contended had cheated him,” the Justice Department said.

    The hit men, however, were “undercover federal agents,” the Justice Department said.

    Kruse laid out the plot while being detained prior to trial, the Justice Department said.

    From a statement by the Justice Department (italics added):

    According to court documents, beginning in 2010, Kruse and his brother conspired to recruit and defraud a number of clients to whom they provided financial advisory services. As part of the scheme, Kruse established a sham investment firm called Yorkshire Financial Services. He and his brother convinced their clients, a number of whom were retirees, to move their savings to Yorkshire. Kruse and his brother deceptively told clients that Yorkshire had been in business for more than 30 years, had a staff of experienced securities traders, and traded in a combination of stocks, bonds and currencies appropriate for individual retirement accounts (IRAs). In reality, Kruse did not invest the investors’ funds. Rather, he spent the investors’ money on luxury cars, home improvements and personal items and made hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash withdrawals. As a result of the scheme, Kruse stole $931,844 from 21 victims.

    Senior U.S. District Judge Harvey E. Schlesinger late yesterday ordered Kruse jailed for three decades. Kruse further was ordered to pay restitution of $897,960 and serve five years’ supervised probation upon his prison release.

    The case was investigated by the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

  • DEVELOPING STORY: Buford Rogers Arrested In Alleged Localized Terror Plot In Minnesota, FBI Says

    Buford Braden Rogers: Source: Chippewa County Sheriff's Office.
    Buford Braden Rogers: Source: Chippewa County Sheriff’s Office.

    FBI agents and other members of law enforcement have arrested 24-year-old Buford Rogers in Montevideo, Minn., after executing a search warrant Friday and finding “explosive devices” and “several guns,” the FBI said today.

    “The FBI believes that a terror attack was disrupted by law enforcement personnel and that the lives of several local residents were potentially saved,” the agency said.

    The alleged plot was “discovered and subsequently thwarted through the timely analysis of intelligence and through the cooperation and coordination” among federal, state and local agencies, the FBI said.

    How long the probe had been under way was not immediately clear. Also unclear is whether the alleged plot was targeted at specific individuals or posed a general local threat.

    Montevideo is a small town in Chippewa County, about 140 miles west of Minneapolis. Rogers is being held on a charge of possessing a firearm as a convicted felon.

    The Star Tribune of Minneapolis/St. Paul is reporting that agents found “Molotov cocktails, suspected pipe bombs and a Romanian AKM assault rifle among the firearms.”

    Agencies participating in the probe include the Montevideo Police Department; the Chippewa County Sheriff’s Office; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; the Minnesota State Highway Patrol; the Bloomington Police Department; the Minnehaha County Sheriff’s Office (South Dakota); the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources; and members of CEE-VI (Cooperative Enforcement Effort), the FBI said.

    Rogers turned 24 in December, according to his booking sheet at the Sheriff’s Office.

  • Man Who Posed As Fraud Investigator And Blew Up His Own Mailbox Convicted In Bizarre Bid To Extort Ponzi Scheme Victims To Pay Him For Information

    A Washington state man has been convicted of nine federal felonies in a bizarre case in which he attempted to fleece Ponzi scheme victims by blowing up his own mailbox and taking guns and bomb-making components to Atlanta.

    Kevin W. Williams, 45, of Chehalis, was found guilty of three counts of wire fraud, extortion, possession of a firearm without a serial number, destruction of a letter box, making a false official statement and two counts of possession of an unregistered firearm. The unregistered firearms included a pipe bomb and a zip gun, federal prosecutors said.

    Williams’ plot began in 2007 and featured a claim that he was an investigator who knew where the loot from a $90 million Ponzi scheme in Greater Atlanta had been hidden, prosecutors said.

    In a bid to make his claims sound credible, Williams, an unemployed logger, blew up his mailbox with a homemade bomb. He apparently reasoned that Ponzi victims and attorneys involved in the case would give him money if they came to believe his information was so valuable that someone tried to maim him to make him turn silent, prosecutors said.

    Williams was slightly injured in the mailbox detonation that he arranged with an accomplice, prosecutors said. After the mailbox exploded, emergency responders were summoned to make the story more plausible.

    The trouble with the story, prosecutors said, was that the “blast was so powerful that Williams would have been badly injured if it had occurred as he described. He was checked at the hospital and released the same day having suffered only a few minor scratches on his forehead and ringing in his ears as injuries.”

    With no one willing to pay him for his purported information, Williams dialed up the scheme, prosecutors said.

    First, he sent emails “with a threatening tone,” prosecutors said.

    And then Williams traveled to Atlanta for the Ponzi trial.

    “He was arrested by law enforcement with a variety of guns, ammunition and explosive components in his car,” prosecutors said. “Following that arrest, one of Williams’ cohorts contacted law enforcement, and admitted lying to the police about Williams being the victim of the mail box bomb.

    Assisting in the probe were the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives (ATF) and the Lewis County Sheriff’s Department.

    The case was prosecuted by the office of U.S. Attorney Jenny A. Durkan of the Western District of Washington.

    Williams’ step-mother was a victim of the Atlanta-area scheme, prosecutors said.

  • DEVELOPING STORY: Plane Hits 7-Story Building In Austin; Injuries Reported; IRS Said To Have Office In Building

    UPDATED 12:54 P.M. ET (U.S.A.) An airplane reported to be “small” has crashed into a seven-story building in Austin, the state capital of Texas.

    NBC affiliate KXAN is reporting that at least two people have been injured, that the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are on the scene, and that an office of the Internal Revenue Service is located in the building.

    The building is known as the Echelon Building. Firefighters are on the scene. The crash occurred in North Austin.

    MSNBC has a live feed of KXAN’s coverage. The station is reporting that the plane was flying “very low” at a high rate of speed.

    Meanwhile, Fox News is reporting that the incident is being investigated as an “intentional act.”

    CNN, quoting a “federal official,” is reporting that the suspect in the case set his home on fire this morning, stole the plane and crashed it into the building.