Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com While Arizona and Alabama impose tough crackdowns on illegal immigration, California lawmakers are creating a bill that would protect many illegal immigrants, Reuters reports. California lawmakers are crafting a bill that would bar local police from referring a detainee to immigration officials unless he or she has been convict of a serious…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com The legendary New York mobster Henry Hill who turned government informant, and whose life was the basis for the classic movie Goodfellas, died Tuesday in California. He was 69. Philadelphia Inquirer mob writer George Anastasia wrote: More than any other mob figure in the late 20th century, Hill changed both the perception…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com The continuing clash between state and federal officials over how to handle medicinal pot in states that legalized it arrived in Sacramento again with a raid on a dispensary, the Sacramento Bee reports. Although the Obama administration pledged to respect state laws on medicinal marijuana, the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency executed…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Investments in the drug cartel world apparently know no bounds. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western Texas District announced Tuesday the indictment of 14 members of Mexico’s Los Zetas cartel for laundering money by purchasing, breeding and racing American quarter horses in the U.S. Those indicted included Los Zetas leader…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Catherine Greig, the girlfriend of Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger, is set to be sentenced Tuesday in federal court in Boston. The Boston Herald reports that prosecutors will ask for no less than 10 years in prison. Her lawyer obviously will ask for far less. Bulger and Greig were captured by…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com A former official for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was sentenced Friday in Los Angeles to two years in prison and ordered to pay $400,000 in restitution for obstruction of justice, giving false information to a federal prosecutor and a federal judge in Florida, and devising a scheme to…
Shoshanna Utchenik ticklethewire.com Sometimes being a ‘friend of Israel’ means sharing criminals. Three Israeli mobsters were extradited to the U.S. in January 2011 in the first extradition of its kind under Israel’s racketeering law, which parallels RICO, the U.S. law targeting organized crime. Two of the three pled guilty to a host of drug and…
