Extradition

Fugitive In Massive Navy Bribery Case Caught In Venezuela

Leonard Glenn Francis pleaded guilty in 2015 to bribing military officials so his company could overcharge the U.S. Navy for servicing ships.

A Malaysian defense contractor nicknamed “Fat Leonard” who orchestrated one of the largest bribery scandals in U.S. military history has been arrested in Venezuela after fleeing before his sentencing, authorities said Wednesday.

U.S. Marshals Service via AP

The international manhunt for Leonard Glenn Francis ended with his arrest by Venezuelan authorities Tuesday morning at the Caracas airport as he was about to board an airplane for another country, the U.S. Marshals Service said.

Francis had traveled to Venezuela from Mexico with a stopover in Cuba, Interpol Venezuela Director General Carlos Garate Rondon said in a statement posted on Instagram. Francis was headed to Russia and was arrested at the main international airport in Caracas, the agency said.

The arrest came on the eve of his scheduled sentencing in a federal court in California for a bribery scheme that lasted more than a decade and involved dozens of U.S. Navy officers.

There was no immediate word on when he might be extradited to the United States.

At the sentencing hearing Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Janis Sammartino announced to the court that Francis was in custody in Venezuela and that a “no bail arrest warrant” had been issued.

“This turn of events raises several issues, and obviously will have an impact on other cases,” she said. A sentencing hearing for four Navy officers who went to trial in the case and were found guilty is set for October.

Prosecutors asked the court to note that Francis failed to appear at his sentencing hearing as ordered, while defense attorneys notified the court that they would be filing a motion severing their ties with Francis due to an “irreparable break down of the attorney-client relationship.”

Sammartino set a Dec. 14 status hearing for Francis with the caveat that all parties could meet sooner depending on how events unfold.

“I believe that’s all we can accomplish this morning,” Sammartino said.

The U.S. government faces an uphill challenge returning the fugitive back to American soil. The U.S. government doesn’t recognize Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government, has no embassy in the country and has imposed crushing sanctions on the country that has further embittered relations. Law enforcement cooperation between the two countries is rare.

Francis was under home arrest in San Diego when he cut off his GPS ankle bracelet and escaped on Sept. 4. Ten U.S. agencies searched for Francis and authorities issued a $40,000 reward for his arrest.

U.S. authorities also issued a red notice, which asks law enforcement worldwide to provisionally arrest someone with the possibility of extradition. Malaysia and Singapore both have extradition agreements with the United States.

Francis pleaded guilty in 2015 to offering prostitution services, luxury hotels, cigars, gourmet meals and more than $500,000 in bribes to Navy officials and others to help his Singapore-based ship servicing company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia Ltd. or GDMA. Prosecutors said the company overcharged the Navy by at least $35 million for servicing ships, many of which were routed to ports he controlled in the Pacific.

Francis had been allowed to remain in home confinement to receive medical care while he cooperated with the prosecution. With his help, prosecutors secured convictions of 33 of 34 defendants, including more than two dozen Navy officers.

Sammartino had feared Francis would run when she denied a request four years ago to allow him to be under house arrest without around-the-clock security guards.

The judge repeatedly maintained that security guards must be on site for Francis to be on house arrest, despite his poor health.

According to a transcript of a closed-door hearing in February 2018, which was unsealed in January, Sammartino expressed concern that her name would come up if Francis escaped and ended up back in Malaysia if anyone asked “who let somebody do this without security.”

She raised similar concerns in a Dec. 17, 2020, after receiving a report that the home was left without anyone guarding it for nearly three hours, according to the court transcript. The guard was on a lunch break, and Francis apologized to the judge for the mishap.

Officials found no security guards when they arrived at Francis’ home in a tony San Diego neighborhood some seven hours after he removed the ankle monitor, according to Supervisory Deputy U.S. Marsha, Omar Castillo. The device, believed to have been removed with heavy scissors, was found in the home.

Castillo said someone had called the San Diego police department, which sent officers to the home on the afternoon of Sept. 4. Officers found the home empty and contacted U.S. Pre-Trial Services, the federal agency in charge of his confinement, which then contacted the U.S. Marshals Service.

Neighbors reported seeing U-Haul trucks coming and going from the home one or two days before the escape, Castillo said.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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Mexico’s Capture Of Drug Kingpin Could Be Signal To U.S.

Three days after Mexico’s president and President Biden met in the White House, the most wanted target of the U.S. DEA was in Mexican custody.

As Mexican marines closed in on infamous drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero deep in the mountains of his native state of Sinaloa, it was a 6-year-old bloodhound named “Max” who rousted from the undergrowth the man allegedly responsible for the murder of a U.S. DEA agent more than three decades ago.

While the United States’ motivation to find Caro Quintero was never in doubt — hence the $20 million reward for information leading to his capture — there was less certainty about the commitment of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who had made clear his disinterest in pursuing drug lords.

Yet on Friday, three days after López Obrador and U.S. President Joe Biden met in the White House, the most wanted target of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration was in Mexican custody.

Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office said in a statement late Friday that Caro Quintero was arrested for extradition to the U.S. and he would be held at the maximum security Altiplano prison about 50 miles west of Mexico City.

“It seems to me that in the private talks between President Joe Biden and Andrés Manuel (López Obrador) they surely agreed to turning over high-profile drug traffickers again, which had been suspended,” said security analyst David Saucedo.

Cooperation between the DEA and Mexico’s marines had led to some of the highest-profile captures during previous administrations, but not under López Obrador, Saucedo noted.

Both presidents face domestic pressure to do more against drug traffickers. With Caro Quintero’s arrest, “Narcos are being captured again and I believe that clearly it was what was in fact needed,” Saucedo said.

Samuel González, who founded the organized crime office in Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office and now a security analyst, said that to López Obrador’s benefit, the arrest “shows evidence that there’s no protection of capos” from his administration.

González believes Caro Quintero has long been a thorn in the bilateral relationship, but said that “without doubt” his capture was fruit of the recent negotiations in Washington.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar both expressed gratitude for Mexico’s efforts to catch the man blamed for the brutal torture and murder of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena in 1985 — a case that brought a low point in U.S.-Mexico relations.

“This achievement is a testament to Mexico’s determination to bring to justice someone who terrorized and destabilized Mexico during his time in the Guadalajara Cartel; and is implicated in the kidnapping, torture, and murder of DEA agent Kiki Camarena,” Salazar said in a statement late Friday.

Garland said the U.S. government would seek his immediate extradition.

Mexico’s navy and Attorney’s General Office led the operation deep in the mountains that straddle the border between Sinaloa and Chihuahua states, many miles from any paved road. They found Caro Quintero, with help of “Max,” hiding in brush in a place in Sinaloa called San Simon.

Caro Quintero came from Badiraguato, Sinaloa, the same township as Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the former leader of the Sinaloa cartel, which came later. Caro Quintero was one of the founders of the Guadalajara cartel and according to the DEA was one of the primary suppliers of heroin, cocaine and marijuana to the United States in the late 1970s.

He blamed Camarena for a raid on a huge marijuana plantation in 1984. The next year, Camarena was kidnapped in Guadalajara, allegedly on orders from Caro Quintero. His tortured body was found a month later.

Caro Quintero was serving a 40-year sentence in Mexico when an appeals court overturned his verdict in 2013. The Supreme Court upheld the sentence, but it was too late — Caro Quintero had been spirited off in a waiting vehicle.

Caro Quintero was added to FBI’s 10 most wanted list in 2018 with a $20 million reward for his capture.

López Obrador had previously seemed ambivalent about his case.

Last year, the president said the legal appeal that led to Caro Quintero’s release was “justified” because supposedly no verdict had been handed down against the drug lord after 27 years in jail. López Obrador also depicted a later warrant for his re-arrest as an example of U.S. pressure.

“Once he was out, they had to look for him again, because the United States demanded he shouldn’t have been released, but legally the appeal was justified,” López Obrador said.

Presidential spokesman Jesús Ramírez said at the time, “The president was just saying that it was a legal aberration that the judge had not issued a verdict on Mr. Caro Quintero after 27 years … but he was not defending his release.”

Additional reporting by the Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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Possible Cryptocurrency Fraud Is Another Blow to Turkey’s Stability

A cryptocurrency exchange in Turkey suspended operations this week amid accusations of fraud, freezing an estimated $2 billion in investors’ money, and authorities said they were seeking the company’s founder.

The Turkish authorities raided offices in Istanbul associated with Thodex, a cryptocurrency trading platform, on Friday morning and arrested more than 60 people, the private news agency Demiroren reported.

Thodex’s 27-year-old founder, Faruk Fatih Ozer, left Turkey for Albania on Tuesday, the Turkish authorities said, who added that they were seeking his extradition.

The cryptocurrency firm has nearly 400,000 active users, whose accounts were nominally worth a total of $2 billion, according to Oguz Evren Kilic, a lawyer in Ankara who is representing Thodex investors. If their money has vanished, the losses will add another element of instability to Turkey’s already shaky economy.

banned the use of cryptocurrencies for purchases, citing the “significant risks.”

Thodex promoted itself with ads that featured female Turkish celebrities dressed in bright red outfits and draped over a highly polished black automobile.

“For sure the economic situation has an affect on this,” Mr. Kilic, the lawyer, said in an interview. “In such times of crisis, people want to diminish the loss of value of the assets they have.”

The sagging lira has raised the cost of imported goods and fueled inflation, leading to a steady erosion in living standards. In March, the annual rate of inflation was 16 percent, according to official figures, which many economists say understate the true rate.

In a statement on Thodex’s website, Mr. Ozer, the founder, insisted that he had left the country merely to consult with foreign investors and would return. He said the accusations were a “smear campaign” and blamed the shutdown of the trading platform on a cyberattack.

Thodex “has not victimized anyone,” he said, adding that only about 30,000 accounts “have a suspicious situation.”

Mr. Kilic noted that none of Thodex’s customers could gain access to their accounts. “If you cannot access the account, then you are a victim,” he said.

On Twitter, people reacted to a statement from Thodex with crying face emojis. “There are people who trust and invest everything in you,” one user wrote.

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“I will maintain international cooperation,” he wrote. “But the next government and those of other countries? How will the future be if the narcos win benefits from the USA for their false testimonies, with obvious lies?”

He added, “Inevitable collapse.”

The trial of Mr. Fuentes, who has denied the charges against him, is expected to run into next week. A defense lawyer for Mr. Fuentes, Eylan Schulman, said in his opening argument that his client was “an innocent man wrongly accused of very serious crimes.”

If Tuesday’s statements, coupled with court filings, are any indication, prosecutors are likely to draw a stark portrait of Mr. Hernández as a key player in the drug trafficking industry, which has contributed to the dysfunction and violence that has driven many Hondurans to leave the country in search of safety and better opportunity.

Mr. Gutwillig, the prosecutor, did not mince words in his opening arguments on Tuesday: He called Honduras “a narco-state.”

Mr. Fuentes, he said, “distributed massive quantities of cocaine to the United States,” a business that was enabled through his connections “to police, military and political power in Honduras: mayors, congressmen, military generals and police chiefs, even the current president of Honduras.”

“The defendant owned them all — bought and paid for,” Mr. Gutwillig said.

Mr. Fuentes developed a relationship with Mr. Hernández, who took office in 2014, in a series of secret meetings in 2013 and 2014 during which the men “plotted to send as much cocaine as possible to the United States,” the prosecutor said. Mr. Fuentes paid Mr. Hernández $25,000 for the help.

Mr. Hernández, he said, “made the defendant bulletproof.”

Court records describe conversations between Mr. Hernández and Mr. Fuentes in which the president tells the accused trafficker not to worry about arrest, extradition or the long reach of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. According to prosecutors, Mr. Hernández told Mr. Fuentes that his fight against drug trafficking was a bluff and that he planned to get rid of the extradition policy and swamp the United States with cocaine.

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