Tag Archives: Indictment

Home & Kitchen

Romanian man pleads guilty to swatting attacks on former U.S. president, lawmakers, churches

A Romanian man has pleaded guilty to leading an extensive plot to use swatting calls and bomb threats to intimidate dozens of people, including a former United States president and multiple members of Congress, authorities announced on Monday. 

The allegedly years-long scheme involved bogus police emergencies and false reports of violent incidents at government buildings, churches and private residences, including some senior government officials’ homes, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C.

Thomasz Szabo, 26, is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 23 by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in the U.S. capital, after he was extradited from Romania in November 2024, court records show. 

“This defendant led a dangerous swatting criminal conspiracy, deliberately threatening dozens of government officials with violent hoaxes and targeting our nation’s security infrastructure from behind a screen overseas,” said Attorney General Pam Bondi in a statement. “This case reflects our continued focus on protecting the American people and working with international partners to stop these threats at their source.”

Szabo was charged with Nemanja Radovanovic, 21, of Serbia. He pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and one count of making bomb threats.

The two men targeted roughly 100 people with swatting calls to instigate an aggressive response by police officers at the victims’ homes, a federal indictment alleges.

A U.S. Secret Service agent’s affidavit doesn’t name the former U.S. president or any other officials identified as victims of the hoax calls.

The two defendants are not explicitly charged in the indictment with threatening a former president, but one of the alleged victims is identified as a “former elected official from the executive branch” who was swatted on Jan. 9. 2024. Radovanovic falsely reported a killing and threatened to set off an explosion at that person’s home, the indictment says.

Szabo told Radovanovic that they should pick targets from both the Republican and Democratic parties because “we are not on any side,” the indictment says.

Charges against Radovanovic are still pending. Online court records indicate that he hasn’t made any court appearances in Washington yet.

Source link

Home & Kitchen

Trump says he’s pardoning Scott Jenkins, a sheriff convicted of taking $75,000 in bribes

President Trump said Monday he is pardoning Scott Jenkins, a former Virginia sheriff who was convicted of making several businessmen sworn law enforcement officers in exchange for cash bribes.

Former Culpeper County Sheriff Jenkins, 53, was found guilty on fraud and bribery charges and sentenced to 10 years in prison in March. But on Monday, Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social that Jenkins and his family “have been dragged through HELL by a Corrupt and Weaponized Biden DOJ.”

“This Sheriff is a victim of an overzealous Biden Department of Justice, and doesn’t deserve to spend a single day in jail. He is a wonderful person, who was persecuted by the Radical Left “monsters,” and “left for dead,” Mr. Trump said in the post. “He will NOT be going to jail tomorrow, but instead will have a wonderful and productive life.”

Culpeper County Sheriff Scott Jenkins on Jan. 16, 2020. 

EVA HAMBACH/AFP via Getty Images


CBS News has reached out to Jenkins’ attorneys for comment.

Jenkins was indicted in 2023 on 16 counts. In December, a jury found Jenkins guilty of one count of conspiracy, four counts of honest services fraud and seven counts of bribery. Jenkins appealed his conviction in April.

Federal prosecutors say Jenkins took $75,000 worth of bribes. He allegedly accepted cash and campaign contributions from eight people — including two undercover FBI agents — and in return, gave them badges and made them auxiliary deputy sheriffs, despite not having any training or vetting. He also allegedly pushed officials to restore one bribe-payer’s right to possess a gun as a convicted felon.

Jenkins took the stand in his own defense and said there was no connection between the payments he received and the badges he handed out, according to news reports. Testifying against Jenkins were the undercover FBI agents who were sworn in as deputies in 2022 and immediately thereafter gave Jenkins envelopes with $5,000 and $10,000 cash, respectively.

Trump said Jenkins tried to offer evidence in his defense, but U.S. District Judge Robert Ballou, a Biden appointee, “refused to allow it, shut him down, and then went on a tirade.”

Acting United States Attorney Zachary T. Lee said at the time that Jenkins violated his oath of office “and this case proves that when those officials use their authority for unjust personal enrichment, the Department of Justice will hold them accountable.”

A longstanding Trump supporter, Jenkins is the latest ally of the president to receive a pardon.

On Mr. Trump’s first day in office, he granted pardons and commutations to more than 1,000 people charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Mr. Trump has also granted clemency to several other public officials. He pardoned Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted of trying to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat, and Michelle Fiore, a Las Vegas politician and loyal Trump backer convicted of paying for plastic surgery and other personal expenses with money intended to build a statue for a slain police officer.

Source link

Home & Kitchen

Almost 60 cases dismissed due to corruption in a northern Alabama police department, grand jury finds

Nearly 60 felony cases will be dropped in a small Alabama town because they were compromised by what a grand jury called a “rampant culture of corruption” in the local police department, according to a statement on Wednesday.

The grand jury determined that 58 felony criminal cases had been tainted by corruption in the Hanceville Police Department in northern Alabama, after four officers and the police chief were indicted on a variety of charges related to mishandling or removing evidence from the department’s evidence room.

A Hanceville resident gives an emotional testimony about whether the local police department should be disbanded, in Hanceville, Ala., Feb. 27, 2025.

Safiyah Riddle / AP


The indictment included a recommendation that the department be “immediately abolished.”

The case roiled the town of approximately 3,200 people about 45 miles north of Birmingham.

Cullman County District Attorney Champ Crocker said that even one compromised case “is too many” but that “the Grand Jury had no other recourse,” in a statement on Wednesday night. He added that most of the cases were drug-related and only a few were personal crimes with victims.

The 58 tossed cases were selected based on an audit conducted by the Alabama State Bureau of Investigations.

The audit found that nearly 40% of all 650 evidence bags and almost a third of all firearms weren’t documented before being stored in the evidence room. There was also a wide array of evidence that appeared to be missing, including firearms, cash and illicit drugs.

Hanceville Mayor Jimmy Sawyer placed the whole department on leave in February, and then following weeks of polarized debate, announced in March that the department would be disbanded and rebuilt from scratch.

A spokesperson for Hanceville’s municipal government did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment on Thursday afternoon.

Riddle is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Source link