Posted on June 29, 2012 in Theft

On June 11^th, Governor Pat Quinn signed a new law that will allow local authorities to pursue street gangs. In a measure that was approved by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the law is known as the Street Gang RICO Law, which stands for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations. Mayor Emanuel said the law would provide a “critical tool that will give local law enforcement the power to prosecute gang leaders for crimes that they ordered others to commit.”

The law is based in part on the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act which assigns heavy penalties for those gang leaders who order hits and other criminal activities. Through linking isolated crimes with conspiracy charges, much bigger cases can be brought against gang leaders. The street gang RICO law lists over a dozen of crimes such as murder for hire, kidnapping, hijacking and sex trafficking; it also imposes harder penalties. The new state law allows for sentences of more than 30 years and fines of up to $250,000 for charges of criminal conspiracy.

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 Posted on June 27, 2012 in Criminal Defense

A recent report in the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago police officers arrested two teenagers for possessing a handgun at Finkl Academy, an elementary school on Chicago’s Southwest Side. After a student privy to the incident reported that they had witnessed a 14-year-old girl handling a gun at school, school officials called the girl into the school office. The girl surrendered the gun to school officials without incident, while claiming that she was holding the gun for a male 15-year-old student until after school. Both teenagers now face gun possession charges in juvenile court.

With countless reports of school violence across the nation these days, school officials and law enforcement authorities cannot afford to take reports of a student possessing a gun at school lightly. As a result, the potential consequences for a minor facing gun possession and other gun-related charges can be quite severe. Not only can these children face expulsion from school, but they may face other penalties through the juvenile court system, including a period of incarceration. Whenever any person is charged with a gun-related criminal offense, you must take these charges seriously, even if the alleged offender is a juvenile.

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 Posted on June 23, 2012 in License Suspension

The Chicago Tribune has reported that a June 9^th motor vehicle accident on I-80 near Joliet has claimed the life of a 25-year-old Plainfield motorcyclist. Juan Juarez Del-Angel was riding his motorcycle on I-80 west of I-55 when a Kia sport utility vehicle driven by 42-year-old Aaron Pointer of Joliet lost control when merging onto I-80 from I-55 and drove directly into the path of Del-Angel’s motorcycle. Del-Angel, who was wearing a helmet at the time of the crash, was pronounced dead shortly thereafter at a Joliet hospital.

At the time of the crash, Pointer was driving on a suspended license and had no insurance coverage. Authorities also ticketed Pointer for improper lane usage.

As you can see, what started as a few relatively minor offenses has resulted in the death of another person. While it is unclear in this case why Pointer lost control of his vehicle, the reality is that he was violating the law in choosing to drive his SUV, and therefore caused a fatal accident. As a result, depending on the circumstances that the investigation into this crash reveals, Pointer could theoretically face much more serious criminal charges.

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 Posted on June 20, 2012 in Criminal Defense

Julius Price, 23, managed to evade police for two weeks. The Chicago man had been identified as the prime suspect in the stabbing of four Guardian Angels on a North Side “L” platform. Ironically, Price was arrested after attempting to visit his co-defendant, Keith Gunn, 34, at the Cook County Jail. When arrested, Price was carrying a Bible and a length of rope.

Prosecutors told the Chicago Tribune that Gunn had pistol-whipped a 27 year old passenger on the train in an attempt to steal the man’s cell phone. When he fled with the phone, four Angels caught him and brought him down to the ground. Price allegedly approached the group with a knife.

According to the report, Price stabbed one of the Angles in the lower abdomen and another in the upper arm, which took eleven stitches to close. He cut another on the right arm, sending that man to the hospital for seventeen stitches. Another Angel was stabbed on top of the head and was also bitten on the arm. Both Price and Gunn ran away but the attack was caught on security cameras.

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 Posted on June 17, 2012 in White Collar Crime

Shaun Horan, 31, of Aurora, worked as an accountant at Resource One Bank in Oak Brook from 2007 to 2011. He was recently charged with embezzling almost $300,000 from his former employer. Authorities allege that Horan wrote himself unauthorized checks totaling $286,237.23 from the company account, and in an attempt to conceal the thefts, either deleted or changed entries in the company’s books.

A co-worker discovered the missing money in December while reviewing bank records. A follow up internal audit by the bank confirmed the amount of the money that had been stolen. According to prosecutors, by then, Horan had already spent some of the money on a down payment for a house and a new car.

The Daily Herald reports that Horan is married with two children and has been working for a Chicago-based staffing service for about the past three months. He was charged with one count of theft over $100,000 and faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted. His bail was set at $250,000.

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 Posted on June 14, 2012 in Criminal Defense

An Elmhurst College student has been convicted on charges that he carved racial epithets into the window sill of another student’s dorm room. Myles Burton, 21, had been arrested and charged in December with a felony hate crime connected to the property damage. He was indicted by a grand jury in January.

According to a report in Patch, Burton, from Libertyville, is accused of carving the words “KKK,” “Negro” and “I hate black people” into the stone window sill of the school’s only African-American dorm supervisor. He was found guilty after a two hour bench trial. Prosecutors told the court that Burton was intoxicated and angry when he committed the crime.

Burton told police that he was angry at his basketball coach for calling him a ‘racist’ and only vandalized the building to show “what a real racist does”. In a recorded police interview, he admitted that he knew that those words would be frightening to any black person. It was that interview that the judge cited when handing down his verdict. Burton’s attorney had tried arguing that Burton didn’t know the home he was damaging belonged to an African-American.

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 Posted on June 11, 2012 in Criminal Defense

The Naperville Sun is reporting that a DuPont County judge is allowing DNA testing on a knife that prosecutors say Daniel Olaska, 28, used to kill Shaun Wild in a nightclub confrontation in February. Prosecutors claim they need two blood stains that were found on the knife tested in order to confirm that the knife was the actual murder weapon that killed Wild, a schoolteacher from Naperville.

The stabbing occurred at Frankie’s Blue Room in downtown Naperville. According to prosecutors, one of Wild’s friends, William Hayes, began arguing with the defendant over Olaska drinking beer out of a wine glass. Olaska stood up and stabbed Hayes, 22, with a folding knife. When Wild interceded on his friend’s behalf, he was stabbed in the chest. A nightclub employee, Rafael Castenada, was also wounded.

Olaska was held at the club and arrested as he tried to leave. Security cameras caught the stabbings, and there were witnesses to the event. Those are the reasons that Olaska’s attorney didn’t object to the DNA testing. “I don’t think the results will be relevant. It’s not who-done-it,” said Brian Telander, who has indicated he may argue the stabbings occurred in self-defense during an altercation.

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 Posted on June 08, 2012 in White Collar Crime

According to the Chicago Tribune, a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois charges 36-year-old Bradley Scott Schiller of Chicago with solicitation fraud, misappropriation of investment funds, and issuance of false investment statements.

The Commodity Future Trading Commission (CFTC) alleges that between 2008 and 2012, Schiller used false account statements showing his success as a trader to solicit more than $7.8 million from six investors for trading commodity futures in managed accounts. Schiller then used funds from newly solicited investors to pay off funds owed to old investors, thus creating a complex Ponzi scheme. He was able to gain new investors by lying about his successes and providing them with false account statements he had created.

Meanwhile, Schiller allegedly deposited only $3.7 million of the funds to be invested in actual trading accounts, later losing $1.6 million in trading and then withdrawing $2.1 million from the accounts. This left the accounts with balances near zero. It is alleged that Schiller used the money to fund his expensive automobiles, a high-rise condominium, and pay other personal expenses.

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 Posted on June 05, 2012 in Theft

The Chicago Tribune reports that a woman who stole a Chicago Fire Department ambulance from St. Bernard Hospital in the Englewood neighborhood was arrested after she crashed the ambulance several blocks from the hospital. Law enforcement authorities stated that 30-year-old Cassie Weathersby was not injured after she stole the ambulance for unknown reasons and soon crashed it into another vehicle. Weathersby is being held on $25,000 bond for criminal charges of vehicle theft, driving on a suspended license, and driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI).

There are a variety of situations that might lead to a driver’s license suspension, including DUI, failure to provide proof of vehicle insurance as requested, and excessive traffic citations. When your driver’s license is already suspended and you are caught driving, you undoubtedly face an additional suspension period if convicted of this crime. Furthermore, a DUI conviction results in a driver’s license suspension period, as well. As a result, Weathersby would do well to immediately contact an experienced DUI attorney for assistance with her case, as she is facing a potentially lengthy period without her driver’s license, as well as other serious penalties.

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 Posted on June 02, 2012 in DUI/DWI

According to the Naperville Sun, 39-year-old Karuna Talwar of Lake Forest has pleaded guilty to a charge of Driving Under the Influence (DUI) in the DuPage County Circuit Court. Talwar is the founder of Pay it Forward Foundation of Gurnee, IL, a local charitable foundation.

Talwar stopped her vehicle last winter on a busy street in downtown Naperville in order to exchange text messages with her husband. An officer who noticed her stopped car in the northbound lane of Washington Street approached Talwar’s vehicle and arrested her on DUI charges and other infractions, including operating a motor vehicle while using an electronic communications device.

In return for her guilty plea to DUI, the other infractions were dropped, and Talwar received a sentence of one year of supervision, $1,500 in fines and costs, Level 2 DUI monitoring, and mandatory attendance at a drunk driving victim impact panel. Her sentence included no jail time to be served.

Additionally, Talwar must comply with all terms and condition of supervision and monitoring for a year, or risk further penalties, which might include jail time.As you can see, a DUI conviction can result in serious penalties and high financial costs.

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