truesee's Blog

Originally Published:Tuesday, March 8th 2011, 4:00 AM
Updated: Tuesday, March 8th 2011, 8:54 AM

Ward for News

Claire Abdeldaim leaves Brooklyn Federal Court, where she's on trial for trying to slip nearly $170,000 hidden in her underwear past federal agents at JFK.

A Queens woman nabbed at Kennedy Airport with nearly $170,000 hidden in her underwear was trying to avoid paying taxes on the sale of property in Sudan, the feds said Monday.

Claire Abdeldaim's real estate booty consisted of 1,699 $100 bills, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officer George Wolynski testified Monday in Brooklyn Federal Court.

"We got a big one," Wolynski told his supervisor after seizing the cash last June.

Abdeldaim, 64, had sewn the bills into her bloomers to get the money out of Sudan, where she had sold a tract of land owned by her late husband.

During a layover in Amsterdam on a flight from Khartoum, she removed the underwear in a bathroom and stashed it in her purse. When Abdeldaim arrived in New York, she claimed she had only $17,000 in her purse.

But Wolynski noticed the fabric stuffed in the purse and became suspicious. "I was quite shocked at the amount of currency," he said.

Abdeldaim is free on $100,000 bail and faces up to 21 months in prison if convicted of the smuggling charge.

On cross-examination, defense lawyer John Carman suggested Wolynski wouldn't allow the defendant to amend the declaration form because the officer stood to receive a salary bonus for the huge seizure.

He also argued that Abdeldaim - who is from Haiti and speaks with a heavy accent - innocently left a zero off the money total she declared on her customs form due to a language barrier.

But the contention that her English was shaky was undercut by testimony that she supervises social workers at a Bronx nursing home.

Wolynski said he gave Abdeldaim numerous chances to say how much money she was carrying, and she stuck to her story. When confronted with the evidence, she finally confessed.

"She said she was told by a friend not to declare all the money," Wolynski said.

Police say Gastonia woman shot city worker with BB gun

A Gastonia woman faces multiple charges after she fired a pellet gun Monday at a utility worker who was removing an electricity meter from the house where she lives, police say.

Andrea Griffa, 43, was arrested after the incident, which happened about 10 a.m. at a residence on North Boyce Street in Gastonia.

Police say Billy Wayne Messer, a city utility employee, reported he was shot in the back of the head. It is unclear if he needed medical treatment.

According to police, Griffa was charged with aggravated assault, discharging a firearm within city limits, and possession of marijuana. No court date has been set for her case.

http://www.wreg.com/news/wreg-counterfeit-cash-in-forrest-city-story,0,2081576.story

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin stood up to comedian Kathy Griffin, who has repeatedly criticized her family in stand-up acts, during a Saturday interview with Fox News.

When asked her opinion of the rumor that Griffin is set to play a Palin-inspired character on “Glee,” Palin said, “You know Kathy Griffin can do anything to me or say anything about me because you know she’s…she’s a 50-year-old adult bully, really is what she is, kind of a has-been comedienne, and she can do those things to me.”

Last year, Griffin made fun of Bristol Palin for being overweight and “gain[ing] like 30 pounds a week [during Dancing with the Stars].” At the beginning of this year, Griffin said she’d spend 2011 targeting 16-year-old Willow Palin in an effort to find a new Palin family member to harass. In 2009, Griffin received flak for calling Palin’s baby Trig, who has Down’s Syndrome, a “retarded baby.”

Mama Grizzly Palin made it clear during her Fox interview that Griffin should poke fun at her rather than her kin.

“I would just ask, you know, for respect to my children, as she had stated on CNN that her New Years Resolution was to destroy my 16-year-old daughter, that takes it a little bit too far,” Palin said. “Kathy, pick on me, come up to Alaska and pick on me, but leave my kids alone.”

Link to Video of Palin challenging Griffin to venture to Alaska:

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/03/07/palin-kathy-griffin-a-50-year-old-adult-bully/#ixzz1G0HDhfvG

83-year-old Wal-Mart greeter charged in robbery

Police in Statesville say an 83-year-old man who worked at a Wal-Mart store as a greeter is in jail, charged with donning a disguise and robbing the store at gunpoint Sunday night.

George Plane Jr., of Mooresville, was charged with robbery with a dangerous weapon and discharging a firearm inside the city limits, police say.

According to police, Plane was working Sunday evening in his normal job at the Wal-Mart store in the Crossroads Shopping Center, off Interstate 40 a short distance west of Interstate 77. Sometime shortly before 7 p.m., police say, Plane went out to his car.

Minutes later, a man wearing a disguise returned to the garden center area of the store and allegedly pointed a gun at an employee, demanding money from the cash register. Shortly after taking money, police say, the gunman fired at least one shot into the air. Police say the man escaped with money, got in his car, and drove off.

Witnesses called police, and the N.C. Highway Patrol and Iredell County Sheriff's Office joined Statesville police in spotting the vehicle a short distance away. The man in the car surrendered after a brief standoff.

Statesville police Capt. T.C. Souther told WCNC-TV, the Observer's news partner, he was surprised when he saw the age on Plane's driver's license, saying the man didn't look his age.

"He appeared to be in good shape," Souther told NewsChannel 36.

WCNC-TV contributed.

Woman Charged with Scam Directed at Nuns

 NBC San Diego

A Tustin businesswoman indicted for allegedly conning a group of nuns out of more than $250,000 on a real estate deal surrendered to federal authorities Monday.

Linda Rose Gagnon, 57, was indicted Wednesday on three counts of wire fraud stemming from the alleged scheme to defraud the U.S. Province of the Religious of Jesus and Mary Inc., a congregation of Roman Catholic nuns.

Gagnon is the chief executive of Tustin-based Rose Enterprise Inc., which is billed as a company that helps clients handle delinquent mortgages and other real estate deals, according to the indictment. Gagnon has never had a real estate broker or agent license, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Gagnon, who once was enrolled in the religious order's boarding school, visited a Rhode Island convent where the alleged victims lived in November 2008, according to the indictment.

When Gagnon heard the nuns were trying to buy property on Pequena Street in San Diego to be used as a residence for the order's sisters, she told them she could help them with the deal, according to court papers.

Gagnon sent the nuns a letter with bogus letterhead from an attorney to convince them to send $285,000 from their retirement account that she would use to acquire the property, the indictment alleges.

Instead of buying the property, Gagnon spent the money on herself from Dec. 5, 2008, through February 2009, including $2,450 for pet-sitting services, $217 at a nail salon, $448 for lingerie, $32,575 for mortgage payments, $5,400 for rent and $1,523 on her car loan, according to the indictment.

The indictment also alleges Gagnon lied to the nuns about what she did with the money and refused repeated requests to return the funds.

In March 2009, Gagnon told the nuns she was attempting to close the real estate deal, but the money was tied up in "double" and "triple" escrow, so she needed more cash, the indictment alleges.

Subway Passes McDonald's

Exclusive: Limbaugh’s parent company still using actors to fake radio call-ins, exec tells Raw

David Edwards
March 7, 2011 @ 12:18 pm

Man Gets Shot for Eating Popcorn Too Loudly During 'Black Swan' (UPDATED)

Jacob Hall

Posted Feb 21st 2011 1:30PM

UPDATE: The original article at The Telegraph had its facts a little muddled. It turns out that it may have been the 27-year-old who was the shooter and the loud food muncher, meaning that the victim was just a poor guy standing up to a noisy moviegoer. (It's still a crazy -- and sad -- story.) The Register has the update. Thanks to the reader who pointed this out to us.

At the famed Alamo Drafthouse theater in Austin, Texas, there is a strict policy regarding disruptive moviegoers. If someone alerts a manager to your talking, cell phone using or in-any-way noisy activity, you are given one warning. There is no second warning. After that, you're kicked out of the building without a refund. It's a harsh but reliable system that ensures the quality of your film-watching experience.

But they have nothing on one disgruntled movie lover, who decided that a fellow audience member at a screening of 'Black Swan' was eating his popcorn far too loudly and shot him to death, therefore teaching him a valuable lesson about being respectful in a movie theater.

The incident occurred in Latvia -- which is surprising, since this whole thing is one bottle of Jack away from being a quintessential American experience -- where gun crime is a rarity. The exact details of this fundamental disagreement in theater etiquette are unknown at this time, but the violent exchange between the armed-and-angry 27-year- old and the 42-year-old popcorn muncher occurred when the film was over and the credits were rolling. The assailant, like 'Black Swan's Nina Sayers, had evidently been driven to the edge of his sanity.

LINK TO VIDEO:

http://www.moviefone.com/movie/black-swan/1441150/video/black-swan-trailer-no-1/593401241001

Although movie theaters aren't typically seen as a place to go when you want to get shot to death, they're not completely free of the occasional act of violence. Most of it -- fist fights, minor riots, flashes of gang violence -- remains unreported, but ask any theater employee to regale you with tales and they'll gladly give you an earful. Sometimes, though, the story will explode onto the national scene. In 2008, a Philadelphia man quickly tired of the talkative family sitting in front of him during a screening of 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button', so he pulled a gun and shot the father in the arm to shut them up -- a method that ensured their silence but also his incarceration.

Were these people in the right for shooting their fellow moviegoers? No, of course not -- this is a classic case of overkill (pardon the pun). However, if you're one of those jerks who likes to get chatty or whip out your cell phone during a movie, you should take immediate note: someone may very well shoot you for it. You have been warned.

Monday, March 7th 2011, 12:52 PM

EuroPicsRifca Stanescu is now 25 and grandmother to a little boy aged two-and-a-half. She was married when she was 11.

A 25-year-old Romanian woman could be the world's youngest grandmother.

Rifca Stanescu gave birth to her first child, Maria, at age 12, a British tabloid, The Sun, reported Monday. She urged her daughter not to follow in her footsteps, but the girl also gave birth to a child before reaching her teen years.

Maria reportedly gave birth to her son, Ion, two years ago - when she was just 11 - making mother Stanescu a grandmother at 23.

"I am happy to be a grandmother but wished more for Maria," Stanescu told The Sun.

Stanescu, who lives in the village Investi, married when she was 11 and her husband, Ionel, was 13. The pair eloped so Rifca could escape an arranged marriage planned by her father.

Stanescu (center), her husband Ionel and grandson Ion. (EuroPics) 

"My dad was really annoyed at being cheated out of the right to decide who would be my husband and the dowry," she said. "But then I got pregnant when I was 12 - a year later - and that meant that my husband's family paid my father a dowry and then there was peace." 

The family lives in a gypsy community, and Stanescu says it is common in their culture to become engaged and marry at a young age. Women are expected to be virgins when they marry, and many are betrothed while they are toddlers.

"Ion [her grandson] is a good boy and he is already engaged to a girl aged 8," Stanescu told the Daily Mail.

Stanescu's mother - also named Maria - became a great-grandmother at age 40 when Ion was born.

Stanescu says she encouraged her daughter to stay in school, but the girl dropped out when she was 10 to get married and had her first child six months later.

There is no listing in the Guiness World Records for the world's youngest grandmother.

The Sun reports Britain's youngest grandmother was a 26-year-old woman whose daughter gave birth at age 12 in 1999.

"I did not try to stop my daughter getting married because this is the tradition," she told The Daily Mail. "It's what happens."

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/27080535/detail.html

Posted on Sun, Mar. 06, 2011 Mother gets prison for living with kids under playground equipment on beach Tonya Alanez Sun Sentinel   CANDACE WEST / MIAMI HERALD Broward sheriff's deputies escort Tammy Kongkham after her arrest in December 2008. Kongkham was sentended Friday, March 4, 2011, to four years in prison on three felony counts of neglect and desertion of her two children. Desperation drove a mother to live with her two daughters in an ant-infested dugout under a Fort Lauderdale beach playground, the tearful woman told a Broward judge. Facing a maximum penalty of 17 years in prison, Tammy Kongkham placed her fate Friday in Broward Circuit Judge Ilona Holmes’ hands as she pleaded no contest to two felony counts of child neglect, one felony count of desertion and two misdemeanor counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. “I’m a desperate mother. I love my children so very much, and I miss my children so very much,” said Kongkham, 37, fighting back sobs as she read from a handwritten letter, a Vietnamese- language interpreter by her side. “Your honor, I am asking you to have mercy on my poor, poor soul.” Holmes sentenced Kongkham to four years in prison. After receiving credit for 804 days served, Kongkham will spend about two years in prison. Authorities say Kongkham fled from Philadelphia to Broward County with her daughters in October 2008, two weeks after Pennsylvania child-welfare officials placed the girls in foster care. Kongkham and the girls, then 8 and 10, stayed at a Broward motel until money ran out. They found temporary housing with local acquaintances, but that ended, too. Kongkham used the playground as a last resort while she searched for work, Kongkham’s attorney, assistant public defender Dione Trawick, told the judge. Authorities say Kongkham and her daughters spent weeks living in the hole she and her daughters dug under a playground near State Road A1A and Sebastian Street. They ate, slept and went to the bathroom in the pit, unnoticed by playing children and passersby. Kongkham’s older daughter was found by a Fort Lauderdale police officer on Dec. 4, 2008, at the Galleria mall, begging for food. The girl, who was covered with bug bites, told authorities her mother had abandoned her. Kongkham and her other daughter were found two weeks later in a cardboard box outside a Tamarac strip shopping center. In court, Kongkham said her actions stemmed from desperation, not lawlessness: “I did not know American law. I did not know the words ‘neglect’ and ‘desertion’ until now.” Prosecutor Adriana Alcalde said Kongkham’s selfish, neglectful behavior deserved punishment of 10 years in prison. “What this woman made these kids live through was a nightmare,” Alcalde said. “She didn’t keep these children from harm’s way. She put them in harm’s way.” Kongkham asked to be sentenced to time served so she could return to Pennsylvania to face pending kidnapping charges related to leaving the state with her daughters. The two girls have been reunited with their father. and live in Pennsylvania. In pronouncing sentence, Holmes said she struggled to balance a mother’s love for her children with the peril she put them in. “Ms. Kongkham’s children love her, she loves her children to the point she put them in jeopardy,” Holmes said. “She did what most mothers would do, albeit she didn’t go about it in the right way.”

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/03/06/v-print/2101194/mother-gets-prison-for-living.html#ixzz1FsuQ74Gg

Dentist in town for son's baseball tournament arrested for theft, forgery

Polk County deputy sheriffs arrested Ludwig after finding him at the restaurant waiting for his order. They said Ludwig admitted to finding Majeed's credit card in the parking lot, ordering two large pizzas with extra olives and using Majeed's card to pay the $40.64 bill. Ludwig had $250 in cash in his wallet at the time of his arrest, deputies said.

When asked if he was having financial problems, the sheriff's office said, Ludwig laughed and said "absolutely not." He told deputies his net worth was between $3 million and $4 million.

Ludwig told deputies he was visiting Polk County because his son is playing in a baseball tournament in Winter Haven.

Sarah Palin: Obama 'Inexperienced' In Private Sector & Government

03/ 5/11 06:13 PM

Sarah Palin said President Barack Obama lacks experience in the public and private sectors in discussing his role in ongoing debate over unions, collective bargaining and the recent protests in Wisconsin.

During an appearance on "America's Nightly Scoreboard" on Fox Business on Friday night, she said, "See because our president is so inexperienced in the private sector and in government and in actually running anything and making any kind of budget that inexperience has really made manifest in some of the statements he makes."

Palin went on to take issue with the president's handling of the economy and said he should be "engaging in free-market principles that work" such as reducing taxes. The Fox News contributor added, "His naive and destructive and terrifying anti-oil agenda is going to bring our nation to our knees and his agenda must be stopped."

At the end of the appearance, Palin was asked when she could be expected to reveal whether or not she plans to run for president in the next election cycle.

"I still think it's months away before people need to be lining up and making announcements as to what to do," she said. "In the meantime, I'm going to keep chiming in on the issues that are important in this day."

LINK TO VIDEO:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/05/sarah-palin-obama-inexperienced_n_831879.html

Jailer accused of having sex with an inmate

Investigators allege sergeant slept with murder suspect

Credit: Jennifer Frew | The News Herald

Matthew Hensley
March 04, 2011

MORGANTON --

A Burke County jailer is behind bars on allegations he slept with an accused killer in local lockup.

Sgt. Thomas Edward Pearson, 58, of 109 Red Bud Drive, Morganton was arrested Friday at his place of work — the Burke-Catawba District Confinement Facility — on one count of sexual activity by a custodian, according to a Burke County Sheriff’s Office press release.

The 58-year-old supervisor resigned Friday.

Pearson is accused of sleeping with Alicia Camille Goode, 32, a BCDCF inmate awaiting trial for murder, according to Lt. Becky Weatherman, BCSO.

The investigator said that Pearson is believed to have had sex with Goode at least eight times from January 2010 through last month and could face up to seven additional counts.

Goode told investigators that Pearson gave her more freedoms than other inmates in exchange for sex, Weatherman said, after other inmates came forward with allegations about the relationship.

Interim Jail Administrator Steve Whisenant said Pearson worked at night, when the sergeant on shift runs the facility.

“There are opportunities for the sergeant at night to do some things that others would not have,” he said.

New measures will be put in place, including additional security cameras, to prevent future incidents.

The administrator added that Pearson was a holdover from the past administration, and that the 58-year-old was on leave when he started.

The two have only worked together for about three months, according to Whisenant.

Whisenant took over the facility on Aug. 2 when his predecessor, Mike Metcalf, was placed on administrative leave. Metcalf was later fired after concerns were raised about the conditions within the jail.

Whisenant says he has hired more than 40 percent of the detention officers at BCDCF since becoming top jailer, noting that the facility is still in transition.

“We’ve made quite a few changes,” he said. “We’re still in the process of making changes… The taxpayers of Burke and Catawba counties are entitled to a good detention facility.”

A top priority for the administrator is having a top-notch staff.

“One of the things I have emphasized to the staff is we must have a professional organization,” he said.

He added that most jailers adhere to the law.

“It shouldn’t be a reflection on the overall facility.”

Weatherman also was critical of the sergeant’s actions.

“He crossed the line, and he doesn’t belong in this profession,” Weatherman said.

Pearson is jailed in Caldwell County under a $50,000 secured bond. His first appearance will be Monday.

Whisenant said the 58-year-old would not be housed in Burke County to prevent a conflict of interest.

Weatherman said Pearson, who is married, has a clean criminal record.

Goode is accused of killing 18-year-old Pedro Arnol Ramirez in a botched home invasion on Aug. 24, 2007, along with three other defendants. She also is charged with two counts of assault with a deadly weapon with the intent to kill inflicting serious injury and one count each of first-degree burglary and attempted armed robbery.

Her next court date is May 2.