Traian Bujduveanu has pleaded guilty in the Southern District of Florida to a charge of conspiring to illegally export military and dual use aircraft parts to Iran. Bujduveanu appeared on behalf of himself and his now defunct corporation, Orion Aviation, in federal court in Miami today to announce his guilty plea.

A Trumbull, Conn., resident who was involved in operating three businesses in Brooklyn, N.Y., pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Krzysztof Koczon pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Manhattan to conspiracy to aid another in filing false tax returns.

Jonathan Haynes, a former police officer with the Jackson Police Department, pleaded guilty today in federal court in Jackson, Miss., to stealing money from a citizen during an off-duty encounter.

A former contract employee of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and a dirt, sand and gravel subcontractor were both convicted on charges of conspiracy and bribery in connection with a $16 million hurricane protection project for the reconstruction of the Lake Cataouatche Levee, south of New Orleans.

Nora R. Dannehy, Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut, and other federal officials announced that Hassan Abu-Jihaad, formerly known as Paul R. Hall, 33, of Phoenix, Arizona, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Mark R. Kravitz in New Haven to 120 months of imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release, for disclosing previously classified information relating to the national defense.

The Department of Justice, through the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), is providing federal law enforcement assistance to the Binghamton Police Department in response to the shootings in Binghamton.  The FBI’s Albany, N.Y., field office has sent hostage negotiators, an evidence response team and command post assistance.  ATF is providing seven special agents from the Syracuse and Albany field offices. The Department will continue to provide assistance as requested in response to this rapidly developing situation.

A partner in a Pennsylvania-based lobbying firm was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr., to five months of home detention for destroying evidence in connection with a public corruption investigation, Acting Assistant Attorney General Rita M. Glavin of the Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor for the District of Columbia, Assistant Director of the FBI’s Washington Field Office Joseph Persichini Jr., and Special Agent in Charge C. André Martin of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Criminal Investigation announced.

As homeowners and communities throughout the country continue to face devastating consequences from the deep contraction in the economy and the housing market, the Obama Administration today announced a new coordinated effort across federal and state government and the private sector to target mortgage loan modification fraud and foreclosure rescue scams that threaten to hurt American homeowners and prevent them from getting the help they need during these challenging times.

The Department announced that on April 7, 2009, it will monitor the election in Kane County, Ill., to ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended. Under the Voting Rights Act, the Justice Department is authorized to ask the Office of Personnel Management to send federal observers to areas that are specially covered in the act or by a federal court order.

A former senior executive of Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (BMS), Andrew Bodnar, pleaded guilty for his role in BMS’s dishonest dealings with the federal government relating to a patent deal involving the popular blood-thinning drug Plavix. This plea agreement follows BMS’s June 11, 2007, agreement to plead guilty and pay a $1 million criminal fine – the maximum fine permitted by statute – for misleading the government about the Plavix patent deal.

An Iranian national has been arrested and charged, along with ten other defendants, with participating in a conspiracy to export U.S.-made military aircraft parts to Iran. Defendant Baktash Fattahi, an Iranian national and legal U.S. resident, was arrested in California, on April 3, 2009, on charges of conspiring to export military aircraft parts to Iran. 

Consultores De Navegacion, a Spanish company that operates the M/T Nautilus, an ocean-going chemical tanker ship, pleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court in Boston and has agreed to pay a fine of $2.5 million for criminal violations related to the overboard discharge of oil-contaminated bilge waste on the high seas.

Jorge Flores-Rojas, 44, an undocumented Mexican national, was sentenced to 24 years in prison by Chief Judge Robert J. Conrad, Jr. in Charlotte, N.C., for two counts of sex trafficking of minors and one count of interstate transportation of an adult for purposes of commercial sex. Flores-Rojas pled guilty to the charges on Oct. 7, 2008.

A physicist in Newport News, Va., was sentenced to 51 months in prison today for illegally exporting space launch technical data and defense services to the People’s Republic of China and offering bribes to Chinese government officials. Shu Quan-Sheng, 68, a native of China, naturalized U.S. citizen and Ph.D. physicist, was sentenced by Judge Henry C. Morgan, Jr. in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Norfolk Division.

Latin Node Inc. (Latinode), a privately held Florida corporation, pleaded guilty today to violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in connection with improper payments in Honduras and Yemen. At a hearing before U.S. District Judge Paul Courtney Huck in the Southern District of Florida, Latinode pleaded guilty to a one-count information charging a criminal violation of the FCPA’s anti-bribery provisions.

A former owner of an asbestos monitoring contractor that provided services to New York Presbyterian Hospital (NYPH) pleaded guilty today for making false statements to FBI agents and representatives of the Department’s Antitrust Division. Stephen E. McAnulty, of Brooklyn, N.Y., pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, for lying about his knowledge of a kickback and fraud conspiracy that took place at NYPH.

Six former executives of an Orange County, Calif.-based valve company were charged today in connection with a conspiracy to secure contracts by paying bribes to officials of foreign state-owned companies as well as officers and employees of foreign and domestic private companies. The contracts resulted in net profits to the company of approximately $46.5 million. According to the indictment, the defendants allegedly engaged in a bribery conspiracy from approximately 1998 through 2007.

Three international airline companies—Luxembourg-based Cargolux Airlines International S.A., Japan-based Nippon Cargo Airlines Co. Ltd. (NCA), and Korea-based Asiana Airlines Inc.—have each agreed to plead guilty and pay criminal fines totaling $214 million for conspiring to fix prices in the air cargo industry. In addition, Asiana was charged with fixing the passenger fares charged on flights from the United States to Korea.

The Department has entered into a consent decree with the City of Ecorse, Mich., that, if approved by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Mich., will resolve the Department’s complaint against Ecorse filed in July 2008.

The Justice Department today announced the filing of a lawsuit and the settlement of its claims against Fort Bend County, Texas, alleging violations of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended, and the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).

Two Department of Defense (DOD) contractors were charged with conspiracy and bribery relating to their roles involving DOD contracts in Afghanistan. A Lebanese contracting company is also charged with participating in the same conspiracy.

Adam S. Pretti, 31, a former deputy with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office, pleaded guilty today in federal court in Memphis, Tenn., to using excessive force during an encounter with a citizen. During his plea hearing, Pretti acknowledged that he abused his authority as a law enforcement officer when, in March 2006, he willfully and without justification used excessive force by striking a man in the head.

The Department announced the arrest of a former trooper with the Texas Department of Public Safety who is charged with depriving multiple Latino motorists of their civil rights. According to the four count indictment returned by a federal Grand Jury in Corpus Christi, Texas, on April 8, 2009, Michael Anthony Higgins violated federal law by willfully stealing money from Latino motorists that he had stopped on the highway while working as a trooper.

Two commercial fisherman pleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Md., to violations of the Lacey Act, the federal law that prohibits individuals from transporting, selling or buying illegally harvested fish, in this case striped bass or rockfish.

A woman from the Bronx, N.Y., pleaded guilty today to conspiracy to making false claims and mail fraud. The indictment alleged that between approximately May 1, 2003, and Feb. 28, 2005, Sharon Smith and others participated in a scheme to file false and fraudulent individual income tax returns in the names of individuals who were not entitled to the refunds that were claimed.

A former Jackson County, Mo., sheriff’s deputy was indicted on April 7, 2009, by a federal grand jury for violating the civil rights of a teenage girl whom he forced to perform sexual acts in his patrol car. The indictment alleges that Steven W. Burgess, 35, of Independence, Mo., then a deputy sheriff with the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department, while acting under color of law, deprived a minor child of her Constitutional rights on July 24, 2007.

The Tax Division announced highlights of its work during the past year to defend and enforce the nation’s tax laws. The Tax Division has assisted the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in tracking down tax cheats who use offshore accounts, combating abusive tax shelters, stopping tax defiers and shutting down tax schemes and scams. During FY 2008, the Tax Division also successfully defended refund suits against the United States representing claims of nearly $803 million, and collected, through affirmative litigation, over $178 million.

Invista will pay a $1.7 million civil penalty and spend up to an estimated $500 million to correct self-reported environmental violations discovered at facilities in seven states. The company disclosed more than 680 violations of water, air, hazardous waste, emergency planning and preparedness, and pesticide regulations to EPA after auditing 12 facilities it acquired from DuPont in 2004.

Waquita Wallace pleaded guilty to the federal civil rights charge of sex trafficking. Wallace admitted to forcing a young woman to engage in commercial sex acts through a combination of force, fraud and coercion. Defendant Wallace also benefitted financially from the sex trafficking. She faces a maximum sentence of life in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

Tax return preparer Lawrence Sperling pleaded guilty today to aiding in the preparation of false tax returns. Sperling was scheduled to begin trial on April 14, 2009 before Judge Deborah Chasanow in Greenbelt, Md. According to the indictment and the plea agreement, Sperling knowingly prepared tax returns for his clients that contained false and fraudulent items, including inflated medial expenses, charitable contributions, miscellaneous employment-related expenses, and child care credits.

Robert Moran, of Lighthouse Point, Fla., pleaded guilty today to a criminal information charging him with filing a false income tax return. Moran appeared today before Judge James I. Cohn in Ft. Lauderdale and accepted responsibility for concealing more than $3 million in assets in a secret bank account at UBS in Switzerland.

Rene Soliz of Alice, Texas, pleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court in Corpus Christi, Texas, to a violation of the Lacey Act for attempting to receive fifteen Tanzanian leopard tortoises that were transported into the United States in violation of a law, regulation or treaty, specifically, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

The Department announced that a federal district court judge in Louisville, Ky., approved a settlement of the Department’s lawsuit alleging that those involved in the design and construction of 12 multifamily housing complexes discriminated on the basis of disability. The complexes contain more than 800 units covered by the Fair Housing Act’s accessibility provisions.

Four individuals have been indicted on charges of federal civil rights violations relating to the in-custody death of a detainee at the Lucas County Jail in Ohio and an alleged subsequent four-year cover-up of the role that jail personnel played in the death. The indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Toledo, Ohio, was returned today.

Quest Diagnostics Incorporated and its subsidiary, Nichols Institute Diagnostics (NID), have entered into a global settlement with the United States to resolve criminal and civil claims concerning various types of diagnostic test kits that NID manufactured, marketed and sold to laboratories throughout the country until 2006. The payment of $302 million will resolve these allegations and represents one of the largest recoveries ever in a case involving a medical device.

Ben Milner, a former deputy sheriff with the Choctaw County, Okla., Sheriff’s Department, has been indicted by a federal grand jury for violating the civil rights of a man during a traffic stop and the civil rights of two inmates at the Choctaw County Jail. The grand jury also indicted Milner on two counts of obstructing justice in connection with the incident involving the inmates.

A Rosemount, Minn., man has pleaded guilty in connection with running a Ponzi scheme involving commodity pools. Charles “Chuck” E. Hays, 56, pleaded guilty before U.S District Court Judge Donovan Frank on April 14, 2009, in St. Paul, Minn., to one count of mail fraud, one count of wire fraud, and one count of structuring transactions to avoid financial reporting requirements.

The United States has reached a settlement with NetApp Inc. and NetApp U.S. Public Sector Inc. (collectively NetApp), following an investigation of alleged false claims and contract fraud. NetApp has agreed to pay the United States $128 million, plus interest. This is the largest contract fraud settlement the General Services Administration (GSA) has obtained to date.

An Iraqi-born Dutch citizen was sentenced to 25 years in prison today for conspiring to murder Americans overseas, including by planting roadside bombs targeting U.S. soldiers in Fallujah, Iraq, and by demonstrating on video how these explosives would be detonated to destroy American vehicles and their occupants.

WASHINGTON – Acting Assistant Attorney General Loretta King of the Civil Rights Division announced today that Thomas Houston, former Chief of the Gary, Ind., Police Department, was sentenced to 41 months in prison followed by two years of supervised release for violating the civil rights of a Gary resident in June 2007.

Texas Oil and Gathering Inc., its owner John Kessel and its operations manager Edgar Pettijohn pleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court in Houston to criminal violations related to the disposal of refinery wastes at an underground injection well in violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act.

A Virginia man pleaded guilty today to selling counterfeit computer software on eBay in violation of criminal copyright infringement laws, announced Acting Assistant Attorney General Rita M. Glavin of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor for the District of Columbia.

Timothy Smith, a resident of Cullman, Ala., pleaded guilty today in federal court in Birmingham to one count of tax evasion, the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced.

DuPont and Lucite International Inc. have agreed to pay a $2 million civil penalty to settle Clean Air Act violations at a sulfuric acid plant in Belle, W. Va. The sulfuric acid plant is located on a 100-acre chemical manufacturing complex along the Kanawha River. The plant is owned by Lucite and operated by DuPont. The companies will pay $1 million to the United States and $1 million to the state of West Virginia.

Alta Colleges Inc. and its wholly-owned collegiate schools in Texas have agreed to pay the United States $7 million to resolve allegations under the False Claims Act that the Texas schools submitted false claims for federal student aid funds. The United States alleged that Alta’s Texas colleges obtained the requisite state licenses by misrepresenting to the state licensing agency that they complied with state job-placement reporting requirements and that their interior design programs complied with requirements for a professional license.

Daryl Lee Fierce, 69, of Charleston, W.Va., pleaded guilty today to a civil rights charge in federal court in the Southern District of West Virginia for using fire to intimidate and interfere with a person’s housing rights. Fierce set fire to the victim’s home because African-American and biracial individuals visited the victim in her home.

Two subsidiaries of the Swedish company Trelleborg AB, one based in Virginia and the other in France, have agreed to plead guilty and pay a total of $11 million in criminal fines for their participation in separate conspiracies affecting the sales of marine products sold in the United States and elsewhere.

"Community policing in the United States is built on two partnerships: first, and fundamentally, the partnership between state, local and tribal law enforcement and the communities they serve. And second, the partnership between these law enforcement agencies and the Department of Justice."

A federal grand jury has returned an 18-count superseding indictment charging Thomas E. Parenteau of Columbus, Ohio; Dennis G. Sartain of Hilliard, Ohio; and Bonnie Helt-Adams of Dublin, Ohio, with tax fraud, bank and wire fraud, money laundering and obstruction of justice.

A former Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) official pleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court in Columbus, Ga., for his role in a conspiracy to commit bribery involving a multimillion dollar telecommunications contract, and for not reporting the bribes he accepted on his income tax returns.