Alexander Ros Lazo, 54, of Homestead, an owner and operator of T.L.C. Health Services Inc., a home health agency, pleaded guilty this week to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud before U.S. District Judge Jose E. Martinez of the Southern District of Florida. Misleidy Ibarra, 46, also of Homestead, a licensed massage therapist, pleaded guilty before Judge…
Salvatore Colonna, 69, of Fort Lauderdale, was sentenced on November 30, 2018, to 78 months in prison for his role in a $16 million precious metals and securities fraud scheme and ordered to pay approximately $13 million in restitution. According to court documents, from January 2010 through October 2013, the defendant worked as a broker for Liberty International Financial Services…
Substantial Assistance Cooperation agreements are usually embodied in the text of a plea agreement and require the defendant to perform some act of “substantial assistance” to the government. Substantial assistance can involve providing information that will lead to the investigation and arrest of other persons, going undercover, agreeing to repeated debriefings with law enforcement officers, agreeing to meetings with prosecutors…
A former West Palm Beach, Florida resident pleaded guilty today to multiple criminal charges in connection with a sophisticated global cell phone fraud scheme that involved compromising cellphone customers’ accounts and “cloning” their phones to make fraudulent international calls. Braulio De la Cruz Vasquez, 54, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, access device fraud, the…
A Fort Lauderdale broker for Liberty International Financial Services (“Liberty”) has pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in the Southern District of Florida. According to the plea documents, from January 2010 through October 2013, Salvatore Colonna agreed to participate in a scheme with other co-conspirators to obtain money from investors by means of materially false…
In a recent publication, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) found, “There is ample evidence that federal criminal defendants are being coerced to plead guilty because the penalty for exercising their constitutional rights is simply too high to risk.” In its Trial Penalty report, NACDL examines sentencing and other data underlying the fact that, after a 50 year…