By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com An FBI report shows that mortgage fraud appears to be on the rise. The FBI said it had 3,129 pending mortgage fraud investigations in 2010, up 12 percent from 2009 and up 90 percent from 2008 when the economy tanked and the real estate market was already in dire straights. The…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com A former special agent with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Criminal Investigation Division in Dallas was indicted Wednesday in Louisiana for allegedly lying about having an affair with an FBI agent he was working with, the Justice Department announced. Keith Phillips, 61, of Kent, Tex. was charged with obstruction of justice and…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Some cartoons simply aren’t funny. The Secret Service and FBI are investigating who faxed a racially charged cartoon to the White House and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex), the Houston Chronicle reported. The cartoon depicted nooses and lynching posts, the paper reported. The headline included a racial epithet and the cartoon…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Note to Sammy Ladymon: Find a new hobby. The 45-year-old Garland, Tex. man was arrested Thursday night after getting caught pointing a laser at an FBI aircraft that was hovering above, NBC DFW reported. The station reported that the FBI pilot flew over the area in response to complaints from pilots…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com ATF has rubbed the Motley County, Tex., government the wrong way. The city attorney Tom Edwards says ATF could face Class C misdemeanor charges for violating the county’s burn ban after the agency detonated unwanted explosives, which triggered a fire that scorched 150 acres of land, according to the Plainview Daily…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Rep. Peter King is busting the chops of the Justice Department, claiming the department overruled fed prosecutors and FBI agents who wanted to file charges against unindicted co-conspirators in a prosecution of a Texas-based Muslim charity — the Holy Land Foundation — which had ties to Hamas in Gaza, the Washington…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com A government watchdog group — Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) — wants to figure out why ex-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was never prosecuted federally. CREW filed a lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in D.C. against the Justice Department for failing to release records of the…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com ATF said Tuesday it had arrested a suspected gun trafficker in Texas who allegedly bought one of the weapons that wound up in Mexico and was used to kill ICE agent Jaime Zapata on Feb. 15. Authorities said Mexican authorities recovered three guns used in the ICE agent’s slaying — one…
