Year: 2012

Unsurprisingly, a grand jury returned a fifty-seven-count indictment this month charging Rashia Wilson of Wimauma and Maurice Larry of Tampa with conspiracy and multiple counts of wire fraud, filing false tax returns, theft of government property, and aggravated...

Earlier this month, social worker Stephanie Ross died after allegedly being slashed multiple times with a large butcher knife by Dade City resident Lucious Smith. Ross was visiting with Smith to help him manage his Medicaid benefits. She had visited him on three prior...

A Hernando County judge sentenced Mikell Begley of Brooksville to 11 years in prison last week for the April death of Begley's friend Gary Ziegler. The sentence came after Begley pleaded no contest to DUI manslaughter.Had he been convicted at trial, Begley faced a...

Jervis Wise, an attorney here in the Law Offices of Bjorn Brunvand, obtained a not guilty verdict this week for a client in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Tampa Division. Wise's client was charged with conspiracy to possess with...

Bruno Skoczynski, a 36-year-old mortgage broker from Dunedin, was sentenced this month by a Tampa federal court to two years in prison. Skoczynski owned E-Value Mortgage Services and E-Value Title Services. He pleaded guilty to mortgage fraud conspiracy charges in...

Shaneva Boyd of Clearwater was sentenced earlier this month to 12 months and 1 day in federal prison, followed by 3 years of supervised release, for participating in a conspiracy to commit federal student financial aid fraud. The federal court in Tampa also ordered...

Local media reported another round of tax refund fraud charges in the Tampa Bay area recently. Federal prosecutors now claim that several former Hillsborough County high school football players participated in the scheme and even recruited students at the University...

A federal court judge in Tampa sentenced Cristie Fay Bottorff and Jerry Alan Bottorff of Brandon this week to three concurrent terms of life in federal prison for the contract murder of Cristie Bottorff's former husband, Thomas Lee Sehorne, of Lithia, Florida. The...

Eighteen-year-old Benjamin K. Bishop of Oldsmar was charged this weekend in Pinellas County with killing his mother and her boyfriend in their Oldsmar home. He faces two counts of first-degree murder. According to the sheriff's report, Bishop has a history of mental...

Albert Friedman, an 81-year-old Hudson man, was arrested last week in connection with an August 5th crash in Pasco County. Two people were killed in the crash, which occured on US Highway 19. Friedman has been charged with two counts of DUI manslaughter, two counts of...