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    Dozens of Canadians Are Charged in $21 Million ‘Grandparent Scam’

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    The conspirators called older adults and posed as their grandchildren in need of bail money after a fake arrest, federal prosecutors said.They sat in call centers in Montreal and targeted older Americans, claiming to be grandchildren in need of bail money after an arrest. In all, federal prosecutors said, more than two dozen Canadians defrauded hundreds of vulnerable Americans out of $21 million over three years in what the authorities called a “Grandparent Scam.”On Tuesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Vermont announced that 25 Canadian nationals had been charged with conspiring to defraud Americans in 45 states. All of those accused are from Ontario or Quebec, and 23 had been arrested in Canada as of Tuesday afternoon, prosecutors said.According to prosecutors, the conspirators placed phone calls from centers in and near Montreal between the summer of 2021 and June 4, 2024, as part of the scheme.“Today’s arrests are the result of domestic collaboration as well as our critical international partnerships with our colleagues in Canada, Sûreté du Québec and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,” Michael J. Krol, a special agent for Homeland Security Investigations in New England, said in a statement on Tuesday. “Tackling transnational crime is one of our greatest priorities and we’re working hand-in-hand with our neighbors to dismantle organized criminal groups that threaten our safety and security.”The call centers were managed by five Canadians who were charged with money laundering in addition to the conspiracy charge that all of those charged face, according to court records.“These individuals are accused of an elaborate scheme using fear to extort millions of dollars from victims who believed they were helping loved ones in trouble,” Mr. Krol said in the statement.The conspirators also told the older adults that there was a “gag order” that prevented them from discussing their relative’s predicament with other family members, the U.S. attorney’s office said.The callers used a variety of tactics to obtain money from the older Americans, according to court records. The most common tactic was to pose as a young relative who had just been arrested after a car accident.After the victims turned over the money, it was eventually transmitted to Canada, the authorities said, noting that some of the transactions involved cryptocurrency.The 25 Canadians whose indictments were unsealed on Tuesday joined nine Americans who had previously been charged in the “Grandparent Scam,” the authorities said.Contacts for those charged or their lawyers were not immediately available.If convicted, the five managers would face a maximum of 40 years in prison, while the other alleged conspirators would face a maximum of 20 years in prison.The F.B.I. warned that grandparent schemes targeting older adults are common. One such scheme figured in the plot of the 2024 movie “Thelma,” starring June Squibb, which followed a 93-year-old woman on a journey to reclaim the money that had been stolen from her. More

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      Former Sheriff’s Deputy Is Convicted in Killing of Colorado Man

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      Andrew Buen was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide in the 2022 killing of Christian Glass, who was experiencing a mental health crisis on a mountain road.A former Colorado sheriff’s deputy who fatally shot a 22-year-old man who was experiencing a mental health crisis on a dark mountain road in 2022 was convicted Thursday of criminally negligent homicide.The former deputy, Andrew Buen, could face up to three years in prison when he is sentenced on April 14, according to the Clear Creek County District Attorney’s Office. The jury declined to convict him on the more serious charge of second-degree murder in the killing of Christian Glass, whose death prompted scrutiny of how the police handle crisis intervention, prompted changes to how officers train for similar situations and resulted in a $19 million settlement for Mr. Glass’s parents.Last year, Mr. Buen was found guilty of reckless endangerment in connection with the shooting, but the jury could not reach a verdict on the second-degree murder charge, which carries a maximum penalty of 48 years in prison. That set up this month’s trial, which lasted two weeks.Mr. Glass’s father, Simon Glass, said Thursday that conviction of Mr. Buen had brought him significant relief.“We don’t have to be constantly worrying, ‘Will he get away with it?’” Simon Glass, 56, said by phone after attending the trial. “The jury probably showed him a little more mercy than he showed our son, but it’s a conviction.”A lawyer for Mr. Buen, Mallory Revel, said in a statement that a murder count “was never the appropriate charge in this case, and we are grateful to all of the jurors for recognizing that.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      California Shifts Rightward on Crime in an Election Fueled by Frustration

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      Voters in the Democratic-run state overwhelmingly approved a measure to impose harsher sentences for crimes and were on their way to ousting two progressive district attorneys.California has shown no signs of going Republican anytime soon, but in Tuesday’s elections the reliably liberal state lurched to the right in ways that might surprise other Americans.Fed up with open-air drug use, “smash-and-grab” robberies and shampoo locked away in stores, California voters overwhelmingly passed a ballot measure, Proposition 36, that will impose harsher penalties for shoplifting and drug possession. Voters in Oakland and Los Angeles were on their way to ousting liberal district attorneys who had campaigned on social justice promises to reduce imprisonment and hold the police accountable. And statewide measures to raise the minimum wage, ban the forced labor of inmates and expand rent control, all backed by progressive groups and labor unions, were heading toward defeat.Amid a conservative shift nationally that included Donald J. Trump’s reclamation of the White House, voters in heavily Democratic California displayed a similar frustration, challenging the state’s identity as a reflexively liberal bastion.And Mr. Trump appears to have gained ground in California compared with four years ago, based on initial election returns, despite facing Vice President Kamala Harris in her home state. (She was still ahead by nearly 18 percentage points after a vote count update on Thursday, but Joseph R. Biden Jr. won in 2020 by 29 points.)The mood this year was “very negative about the direction of the country especially, but also the state,” said Mark Baldassare, who is a political scientist and the statewide survey director for the Public Policy Institute of California. “Lots of concerns about the direction of the economy, and worries about the cost of living and public safety.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Collector Sues to Block Investigators From Seizing Roman Bronze

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      Lawyers for the collector, based in California, said the Manhattan district attorney’s office did not have the jurisdiction or the evidence to support seizing the ancient statue.A California collector has gone to court to block efforts by New York investigators to seize an ancient Roman bronze statue that they assert was looted from Turkey in the 1960s.In a federal court filing last week in California, lawyers for the collector, Aaron Mendelsohn, 74, disputed the evidence they said investigators had presented indicating that the ancient statue of a man was stolen from an archaeological site in Turkey. The lawyers said that investigators had no jurisdiction to seize items in California and so were overstepping their authority.It was the latest in a series of recent challenges to efforts by the Manhattan district attorney’s office to seize artifacts believed to have been looted. The Cleveland Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago are also engaged in legal challenges with the investigators over items with disputed histories.In Mr. Mendelsohn’s case, his lawyers have accused the investigators of using the threat of prosecution to pressure their client into giving up the statue. In addition, they have argued that by pursuing the statue in a potential criminal proceeding, the investigators can avoid the fuller disclosure and access to evidence that would have been required in civil court.The district attorney’s office “has invoked New York criminal process in an effort to intimidate Mr. Mendelsohn into relinquishing the Bronze Male, without affording Mr. Mendelsohn a legitimate opportunity to fully explore the evidence that DANY claims casts doubt on Mr. Mendelsohn’s ownership or to litigate its true ownership,” Marcus A. Asner, a lawyer for Mr. Mendelsohn, wrote in court papers filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Western Division.The Manhattan district attorney’s office responded with a statement that said: “Our Antiquities Trafficking Unit has successfully recovered thousands of stolen antiquities that came through Manhattan from galleries, homes, and museums around the country. We will respond to this filing in court.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Heirs of Jews Who Fled the Nazis Return Art to Heirs Whose Family Could Not

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      An Egon Schiele drawing was returned on Friday at the Manhattan district attorney’s office. The heirs said in a statement that relinquishing the work was “the right thing to do.”“Seated Nude Woman,” a drawing by the Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele, was returned on Friday to the heirs of Fritz Grünbaum, a Jewish art collector and Viennese cabaret performer who was killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust.The drawing had been held by the heirs of a Jewish couple who fled the Nazis just before World War II and later unknowingly bought the work, which investigators for the Manhattan district attorney’s office say were among dozens looted from Grünbaum by the Third Reich.The return took place at the district attorney’s office in Manhattan. The grandchildren of the couple, Ernst and Helene Papanek, said in a statement that relinquishing the work was “the right thing to do” in the face of evidence it had been looted.Since September, five museums and four private owners have handed back 11 works once owned by Grünbaum in what has become the largest Holocaust art restitution case in the United States.One museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, has challenged an order from investigators to turn over a 12th Schiele, “Russian War Prisoner,” that was once owned by Grünbaum, who died in a concentration camp in 1941. The museum has contested the evidence cited by investigators and a legal battle over the work is proceeding in New York State Supreme Court.A Grünbaum descendant, Timothy Reif, responded to Friday’s return in a statement that said the recovery of the work sends a message “that crime does not pay and that the law enforcement community in New York has not forgotten the dark lessons of World War II.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Manhattan Prosecutors Agree to Delay Trump’s Sentencing

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      Donald J. Trump’s lawyers want to argue that a Supreme Court decision giving presidents immunity for official acts should void his felony conviction for covering up hush money paid to a porn star.Manhattan prosecutors on Tuesday agreed with Donald J. Trump’s request to postpone his criminal sentencing so that the judge overseeing the case could weigh whether a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling might imperil his conviction, new court filings show.It is up to the judge to determine whether to postpone the sentencing, though with both sides in agreement, it seems likely he would do so.Mr. Trump, who was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to his cover-up of a sex scandal during his 2016 presidential campaign, was scheduled to be sentenced on July 11. He faces up to four years in prison, though he could receive as little as a few weeks in jail, or probation.On Monday, the Supreme Court granted Mr. Trump broad immunity from prosecution for official actions taken as president, dealing a major setback to his federal criminal case in Washington, where he is accused of plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss.Although the Manhattan case does not center on Mr. Trump’s presidency or official acts — but rather personal activity during his campaign — his lawyers argued on Monday that prosecutors had built their case partly on evidence from his time in the White House. And under the Supreme Court’s new ruling, prosecutors not only cannot charge a president for any official acts, but also cannot cite evidence involving official acts to bolster other accusations.In a letter to the judge who presided over the trial, Juan M. Merchan, Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued that the conviction should be set aside. They also asked Justice Merchan to postpone the sentencing while he considered their request.In response to the letter from Mr. Trump’s lawyers, the district attorney’s office wrote that prosecutors did not oppose Mr. Trump’s request to delay the sentencing.“Although we believe defendant’s arguments to be without merit, we do not oppose his request for leave to file and his putative request to adjourn sentencing pending determination of his motion,” wrote Joshua Steinglass, one of the assistant district attorneys who tried the case against the former president.Mr. Trump’s lawyers proposed filing their court papers on July 10, and the district attorney’s office said it would respond two weeks later.This is a developing story and will be updated. More

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      Ex-Philadelphia Officer Pleads Guilty in Fatal Shooting of Boy, 12

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      Edsaul Mendoza, a former Philadelphia police officer, could face up to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to third-degree murder.A former Philadelphia police officer pleaded guilty on Friday to third-degree murder in the shooting of a fleeing 12-year-old boy in 2022, according to the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office.The former officer, Edsaul Mendoza, 28, also pleaded guilty to possession of an instrument of crime in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County before Judge Diana Anhalt, court records show.Mr. Mendoza, who is scheduled to be sentenced on July 22, could face up to 40 years in prison.Mr. Mendoza fatally shot the boy, Thomas Siderio, during a foot chase on the night of March 1, 2022, after Thomas shot at an unmarked police vehicle that Mr. Mendoza and three other Philadelphia police officers were in, according to prosecutors.Mr. Mendoza had initially been charged with first-degree murder, third-degree murder, voluntary manslaughter and possession of an instrument of crime, according to prosecutors.A jury trial had been scheduled for May 13, court records show.Charles Gibbs, a lawyer for Mr. Mendoza, declined to comment on Friday.A lawyer for the Siderio family did not immediately respond to a request for comment.“Justice must be evenhanded,” the district attorney’s office said in a statement on Friday. “Everyone must be accountable under the law.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Prosecution of Trump in Georgia Hangs in Balance at Hearing

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      Lawyers will sum up their arguments on Friday about whether Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, has a conflict of interest and should be disqualified.A judge in the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald J. Trump is scheduled to hear final arguments on Friday on a motion to disqualify the prosecutor who brought the case, Fani T. Willis, on the ground that a romantic relationship she had with a subordinate created a conflict of interest.The presiding judge, Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court, is not likely to rule on the matter on Friday. Rather, the hearing, which is scheduled to start at 1 p.m., will allow lawyers from the two sides to sum up their arguments over a salacious subplot to the election case — one that has already caused significant embarrassment and turmoil for Ms. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney. Details of her personal life have been spilled out in the Atlanta courthouse where she had hoped to put Mr. Trump and 14 co-defendants on trial as soon as this summer.The stakes are high: If Ms. Willis is disqualified from the case, her entire office would be, too, and the case would probably be turned over to a district attorney from another jurisdiction. The new prosecutor could choose to continue the case as planned, modify the charges or drop them.Disqualification would reduce the chances that a trial would begin before the November presidential election, in which Mr. Trump is expected to be the Republican nominee.The relationship between Ms. Willis and Nathan Wade, an Atlanta-area lawyer she hired in November 2021 to manage the prosecution team, first came to light in January, in a motion filed by a lawyer for one of Mr. Trump’s co-defendants.The presiding judge, Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court, is not likely to rule on the matter on Friday.Pool photo by Brynn AndersonWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      With Everything on the Line, Fani Willis Delivered Raw Testimony

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      Ms. Willis, the district attorney overseeing the Georgia prosecution of Donald J. Trump, searingly refuted allegations that she had a disqualifying conflict of interest.Fani T. Willis walked unaccompanied through the front door of a Fulton County courtroom on Thursday afternoon in a bright magenta dress and announced she was ready to testify. She was interrupting her lawyer, who at that very moment was trying to convince a judge that she should not have to testify at all.“I’m going to go,” Ms. Willis said.And so she did.For roughly three hours on Thursday, Ms. Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., engaged in the fight of her life from the witness stand to try to salvage the case of her life, the prosecution of former President Donald J. Trump. In a raw performance, Ms. Willis, 52, presented herself as a woman in full — by turns combative and serene, focused and discursive (at one point she declared her preference for Grey Goose vodka over wine). Her language toggled between casual (a thousand dollars was “a G”) and precise: On numerous occasions, she prefaced her statements with variations on the phrase, “I want to be very clear.”She upbraided Ashleigh Merchant, one of the defense lawyers questioning her, alleging that Ms. Merchant’s court filings — which accused Ms. Willis of having a disqualifying conflict of interest stemming from a romantic relationship with Nathan J. Wade, the special prosecutor on the case — were full of lies. At one point her voice approached a yell, prompting Scott McAfee, the mild-mannered judge, to call a five-minute recess in an apparent effort to cool things down.Elsewhere, Ms. Willis chided Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Steven Sadow, when he asked if she had been in contact with Mr. Wade in 2020. Noting that Mr. Wade had cancer at the time, she said, “I am not going to emasculate a Black man.” She spoke of giving Mr. Wade a trip to Belize for his 50th birthday — earlier in the day, Ms. Merchant had asked Mr. Wade about the couple visiting a tattoo parlor there. She also admitted, in a digression that the lawyers’ questions did not seem to prompt, that she thought Mr. Wade had a sexist view of the world, and said it was the reason they broke up last summer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More