Ingrid Lederhaas-Okum: The Thieving Employee

     On July 1, 2013 at 8:45 in the evening, three men walked into the jewelry store inside the Borgata Hotel in Atlantic City, smashed a glass jewelry display case, scooped up $200,000 in Rolex watches then ran out of the hotel.

     While the Atlantic City smash-and-grab theft was considered a fairly big haul it was nothing compared to what a jewelry thief could steal working from the inside.

     On Tuesday, July 2, 2013, the day after the Borgata Hotel smash-and-grab, FBI agents arrested Ingrid Lederhaas-Okum at her upscale home in Darien, Connecticut. A federal prosecutor charged the 46-year-old vice president in charge of product development at the Tiffany flagship location on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue with stealing $12 million worth of jewelry from the famed store.

     FBI agents working the case believe that between November 2012 and February 2013 the executive had checked out more than 165 pieces of jewelry that were not returned to the store. The missing merchandise included diamond bracelets, platinum and gold diamond drop and loop earrings, platinum and diamond rings and platinum and diamond pendants. Lederhaas-Okum stood accused of selling the checked-out pieces of jewelry to another company. Federal investigators believed the suspect used her husband and one of her friends as sales intermediaries.

     After Tiffany & Company auditors couldn't find the 165-plus pieces of merchandise in the store's inventory the firm fired Lederhaas-Okum. She held the position of vice president since January of 2011. Lederhaas-Okum began working for the company in 1991 following her graduation from Georgetown University.

     Igrid Lederhaas-Okum pleaded not guilty to the jewelry theft charge.

     In terms of stolen merchandise and cash, retailers in general are hit the hardest by employee thieves who steal three times more than shoplifters and robbers combined. Quite often the most trusted and longtime employees are the thieves who do the most damage. Most of them are eventually caught. A few of these so-called internal thieves avoid prosecution by agreeing to pay restitution. Occasionally, a retailer will decline to prosecute a dishonest employee because such an action would create unwanted publicity. Most of the time, however, inside retail thieves who have stolen large amounts of cash or merchandise end up in prison.

     It's hard to understand why a trusted high-paid executive would risk everything by stealing from his or her employer. Some prominent high-end thieves steal because they are living beyond their means, have large medical expenses, are compulsive gamblers or addicted to drugs. Some employees simply enjoy the thrill of enriching themselves at the expense of their employers. 

     On December 23, 2013 following her guilty plea to one count of Interstate Transportation of Stolen Property, U.S. District Court Judge Paul G. Gardephe sentenced Lederhaas-Okum to one year and one day in federal prison. By any standard, given how much she had stolen, this employee thief got off light.

The Aaron Trejo Murder Case

     In December 2018 16-year-old Aaron Trejo played high school football in Mishawaka, Indiana, a town of 48,000 in the northern part of the state. His girlfriend, 17-year-old Breana Rouhselang, was a Mishawaka High School cheerleader. She was pregnant with Trejo's child, and at eleven o'clock on the night of Saturday, December 8, 2018 Trejo asked Rouhselang to meet him behind his house to discuss the pregnancy.

     The next morning, Sunday December 9, 2018, Breana Rouhselang's mother when her daughter didn't return home went to Aaron Trejo's house and asked him if he had information regarding Breana's whereabouts. Trejo told Mrs. Rouhselang that he and Breana had planned to meet that night but she never showed.

     Mrs. Rouhselang on that Sunday reported her daughter missing to the Mishawaka Police Department. Later that day police officers found an item belonging to the missing girl near a Mishawka restaurant. In the dumpster behind the restaurant officers found Breana's body. A black plastic bag covered the girl's head and upper torso. She had been stabbed in the chest.

     When questioned by detectives Aaron Trejo confessed to killing Breana Rouhselang. He said he tried to strangle her with her scarf, stabbed her in the chest, covered her upper body with the plastic bag then tossed her body into the dumpster. He threw his knife and the victim's cellphone into the St. Joseph River. Trejo said he had been angry that Rouhselang, six months pregnant, had waited too long to get an abortion. He said he had planned for a week to murder Breana and their unborn child.

     On Monday, December 10, 2018 a St. Joseph County prosecutor charged Aaron Trejo with murdering Breana Rouhselang. The prosecutor also charged the suspect with the level 3 felony of killing her fetus. If convicted as charged he faced up to 80 years in prison. The suspect was held in the St. Joseph County Jail without bond.

     On October 30, 2019 Aaron Trejo pleaded guilty to the charges of first-degree murder and feticide.

     A Joseph County Superior Court Judge on January 9, 2020 sentenced him to 65 years in prison. 

The George Wayman Murder Case

     In 2016 31-year-old Veronica Rene Castro lived in a travel trailer in Bellevue Texas, a remote Clay County community near the Oklahoma border 80 miles northwest of Fort Worth. Castro resided with her three-year-old son Dominic Tra'Juan Castro and the boy's 18-year-old stepfather George Coty Wayman. Wayman, a violent dimwit with a facial tattoo had a criminal record that included a recent stretch in prison.

     Shortly after three in the afternoon on Tuesday, May 17, 2016 someone from the Castro dwelling on Buffalo Springs Road called 911 to report a shooting. When deputies with the Clay County Sheriff's Office arrived at the scene they found the Castro toddler shot once in the back of the head.

     Emergency personnel airlifted the seriously wounded boy to the United Regional Health Care System in Wichita Falls Texas. At ten-forty-five the next morning Dominic Castro died.

      George Wayman, when questioned at the scene of the shooting by the police said the boy had been accidentally shot when he jumped on the bed where a 9mm handgun had been placed. The physical evidence at the scene failed to support this scenario. Moreover, several people in the bedroom who had witnessed the shooting had a different story.

     According to the eyewitnesses Mr. Wayman, angry at the toddler for jumping on the bed, aimed the gun at the boy's head and shot him.

     A Clay County prosecutor on May 18, 2016 charged George Wayman with capital murder. (In Texas the intentional killing of a child under six is a death penalty offense.) The accused murderer was booked into the Clay County Jail under $550,000 bond.

      In December 2016 following George Wayman's guilty plea, a Clay County judge sentenced him to life in prison.

North Korea: Living In A Country Without Civil Rights

     What a nightmare it must be to live in a country without a criminal justice system. In North Korea there is no constitution that protects citizens against the power of the state. There is no free press, independent judicial branch or any form of procedural due process such as the presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial. In nations without criminal justice systems leaders eliminate political opponents by criminalizing dissent or manufacturing crimes against people they fear or don't like.

     In North Korea citizens accused of breaking the law have the burden of proving their innocence beyond a reasonable doubt. Guilt is a forgone conclusion for the criminally accused and punishment is swift, cruel and often brutal.

     In October 2012 North Korea's young Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un ordered the execution of Kim Chol, the vice minister of the army. Chol was put to death for drinking and carousing around during the official mourning period following the death of the boy leader's father, Kim Jong-il. The once high-ranking military leader who allegedly disrespected Kim Jong-il's death was not hanged, electrocuted, beheaded or gunned down by a firing squad. Kim Chol's executioners forced him to stand at a marked spot, aimed a zeroed-in mortor round, then fired a shot that blew him to bits. One second he was there, the next he was not.

     In North Korea capital punishment prisoners do not linger on death row up to fifteen years while their appellate attorneys and anti-capital punishment advocates try to save their lives. When the time comes to execute them they are not eased into eternity with a carefully prepared cocktail of drugs. In North Korea there are no last meals, last words or last anything except the condemned person's last breath.

     In 2003 when the Supreme Leader's son Kim Jong-un returned from boarding school in Switzerland he met and established a relationship with a famous North Korean singer named Hyon-Song-wol. Hyon was a member of the Unhasu Orchestra, the Wangjaesan Light Band and the Morganbong Band. She had recorded a string of hits that had propagandistic titles like "Footsteps of Soldiers," "I love Pyongyang" and "We Are Troops of the Party."

     The Supreme Leader, who did not approve of Hyon Song-wol, ordered Kim Jong-un to break off the relationship. After Kim Jong-il died in December 2011 his son, the new Supreme Leader, married Ri Sol-ju, also a singer with the Unhasu Orchestra. Hyon, his ex-girlfriend, married an officer in the North Korean military and had a baby. There were rumors, however, that Kim Jong-un continued to see Hyon. The young Supreme Leader's wife reportedly resented her husband's former girlfriend and wanted her out of Kim Jong-un's life. Permanently.

     On August 17, 2013 North Korean authorities arrested Hyon Song-wol and eleven singers, dancers and musicians with the Unhasu Orchestra. Hyon and the others were charged with breaking the nation's laws against pornography. Specifically, they were accused of making and selling videos of themselves performing sex acts, charges that were patently false and absurd.

     Just three days after being falsely charged with pornography Hyon Song-wol and the others were lined up against a wall and machine-gunned to death. After family members were forced to watch the state slaughter their loved ones they were hauled off to labor camps.

     Toshimitsu Shigemura, a professor at Tokyo's Waseda University, an expert on North Korean affairs, told a reporter with England's The Daily Telegraph that Hyon Song-wol and the other entertainers had been executed for "political reasons" related to Kim Jong-un's wife.

Getting Out of Prison

     In 2010 Tony Maycon Munoz-Mendez, an illegal alien from Guatemala with at least two arrests for driving while intoxicated in Georgia resided with his girlfriend in a town outside of Atlanta.

     In the spring of 2014 Gwinnett County prosecutor John Warr charged Munoz-Mendez with raping his girlfriend's daughter during a two-year period beginning in 2010 when the girl was ten. Munoz-Mendez maintained his innocence and was supported in his claim by the victim's mother. (The child was removed from the home and placed with a foster family. Her mother was later charged with second-degree child cruelty.)

     While awaiting his trial in the Gwinnett County Jail the accused child rapist wrote a letter to the judge in which he said: "I have no family here in the United States to help me out and I have to rely on myself on everything, and it's hard. I know I am innocent."

     In April 2015 a Gwinnett County jury found the defendant guilty of several counts of rape and aggravated child molestation. The judge sentenced Munoz-Mendez to three life sentences.

     The convicted rapist began serving his time at the Rogers State Prison in nearby Reidsville Georgia.

     At 11:30 on Friday morning, October 25, 2019, officials at Rogers State Prison mistakenly released the 31-year-old child rapist back into society. The people responsible for this stupendous foul-up didn't get around to notifying law enforcement that Munoz-Mendez was on the loose until the following Monday. (They either didn't catch the error until then or deliberately delayed notification.)

     Prison spokesperson Lori Benot released a press statement that didn't explain exactly how this corrections fiasco had unfolded. The escape had been, according to the release, a bureaucratic error. 

     On Wednesday, October 30, 2019 U.S. Marshals and ICE agents arrested the prison escapee in Fort Thomas, Kentucky, a town across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. The apprehension took place about 500 miles north of Rogers State Prison in Reidsville, Georgia. If anyone was held accountable for this bureaucratic foul-up it was not made public. 

The Zumba Prostitution Case

     Alexis Wright co-owned and operated Purd Vida, a fitness studio in downtown Kennebunk, a seashore town of 10,000 25 miles south of Portland, Maine. The 29-year-old Wright taught Zumba, an arduous Latin inspired dance-workout in rented space above a hair salon and flower store. The studio operated across the street from where Wright's business partner, 57-year-old Mark Strong Sr. sold insurance and worked as a private investigator. The pair opened Purd Vida in early 2010 and in two years grossed about $150,000.

     In September 2011 someone tipped off the local police that some of Wright's male Zumba students were getting more than a good dance workout. According to the informant (or informants) these clients were paying the instructor for sex and there were a lot of these customers. The idea of a house of prostitution operating in this quaint upscale community was, for the media and those with a taste for the prurient, a scandal made in heaven.

     On February 14, 2012 officers with the Kennebunk Police Department, the Maine State Police and the Drug Enforcement Agency, armed with a search warrant raided Purd Vida. The officers seized a hard drive that contained 100 hours of video-recorded sex acts featuring Wright, her business partner Mark Strong, Sr. and dozens of local men who may or may not have also been learning how to do the Zumba. Some of the taped sex sessions had porn film-like titles. Members of the police raiding party also walked off with boxes of business records which included a list of 150 sex clients. In Wright's office the cops found a massage table and a video camera sitting on a tripod.

     In July 2012 the police arrested Mark Strong Sr. on 59 misdemeanor counts of operating a house of prostitution. The York County prosecutor began issuing summons to men on Wright's client list which meant they would eventually have to appear in court to answer misdemeanor charges of engaging the services of a prostitute. (These court appearances would be matters of public record.)

     According to officials familiar with the Purd Vida investigation some of Wright's clients were lawyers, cops, accountants, local politicians, businessmen, firefighters and a local TV personality.

     On October 9, 2012 following their indictments, Alexis Wright and Mark Strong Sr. were arraigned in a district court. Mr. Wright was charged with 106 misdemeanor counts of accepting money for sex and invasion of privacy. (The taped tricks had been secretly recorded.) Both defendants were released on their own recognizance after pleading not guilty to all charges.

     Stephen Schwartz, the attorney representing two of the alleged johns who had received summons, filed a motion to stop the authorities from releasing the 150 names on Wright's client list.

     Laura Dolce, the editor of the York County Coast Star promised to publish the names on the so-called "list of shame." In justifying the decision to publicize the list, Dolce said this to a CNN correspondent: "Many in the community would prefer we not print the names at all. There are people in this community who had their names dragged through the mud for months because people believed they are on the list. We also believe that printing the names of those charged with engaging a prostitute is the fair thing to do...to help set the record straight, and put to rest the ugly rumors that continue to circulate throughout town." (Publishing the names would also sell a lot of newspapers.)

     After the district court judge denied attorney Schwartz's motion to suppress Alex Wright's client list, the attorney appealed the ruling to the Supreme Judicial Court. In speaking to reporters, attorney Schwartz said, "We believe very strongly that their names ought not be released. The mere releasing of their names will have devastating consequences in a case in which the government, we believe, will have a difficult time proving. We fully expect that they [Wright and Strong] won't be convicted, but the damage is done once the horse is out of the barn."

     On October 16, 2012 the judge cleared the way for the authorities to release the names, addresses and ages of 21 suspected johns who have been issued summons to appear in court on December 5, 2012. Their ages ranged from 34 to 65, and all but two were from Maine. One was from Boston and the other New Hampshire. One of the men accused of paying to have sex with Alexis Wright was 58-year-old James Soule, the former mayor of South Portland, Maine.

     Mark Strong Sr., Wright's business partner, issued a statement in which he said, "I never had sex with [Wright] for money. The charges against me are untrue. I will be vindicated in a jury trial."

     In March 2013, following his conviction on 13 counts of prostitution, Judge Nancy Mills sentenced Mark Strong Sr. to 20 days in jail and a $3,000 fine. The judge sentenced Alexis Wright, on twenty counts of prostitution, to ten months in the York County Jail. She was released after serving six months of her sentence.

     In the course of the scandal 21 names on the infamous client list were released to the public. None of the johns were prosecuted in connection with the case.

Daniel Chong: Missing In Action In The War On Drugs

     The years 2011 and 2012 were not good ones for federal law enforcement. The AFT was embarrassed by the Fast and Furious debacle; an ICE agent shot his supervisor then was shot and killed by another agent; an ICE officer was convicted of embezzling a huge sum of government money; TSA screeners were accused of taking bribes from drug smugglers; and Secret Service agents were caught partying with prostitutes in Columbia. Just when you thought it couldn't get worse the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) pulled one of the most bone-headed blunders in the history of the federal government's war on drugs.

     On Saturday April 21, 2012, 23-year-old University of California at San Diego engineering student Daniel Chong was smoking pot in a house in University City with eight of his friends. That day DEA agents raided the place as a suspected Ecstasy pill distribution center. The agents recovered 18,000 Ecstasy pills, several guns, ammunition and other drugs and took Daniel Chong and the other eight suspects into custody.

     After the nine arrestees were fingerprinted, photographed and questioned at the DEA office in Kearny Mesa, agents released one suspect, took seven to a detention facility and placed the handcuffed Daniel Chong into a holding cell in the DEA office complex. Although being swept up in a federal drug raid was bad enough, Daniel Chong's ordeal had just begun.

     Because Chong was placed into a windowless 5 by 10 foot room with no sink or toilet, he didn't expect to be there very long. But as the hours dragged on and no one came to release him or take him elsewhere, he began to worry. To call attention to his isolation he screamed for help and frantically kicked at the door. Still, no response. Hungry, in need of a bathroom, scared and in a state of panic, Daniel Chong began to lose control of his body and his emotions.

     A day or so into his confinement Daniel Chong found a plastic bag containing white powder a previous detainee had hidden inside a folded blanket. Chong ingested the powdery stuff which turned out to be methamphetamine. The abandoned office prisoner drank his own urine and by his third day in captivity began hallucinating. In an effort to kill himself the prisoner used his teeth to break out the glass in his eyewear then swallowed the shards. As DEA personnel went about their business just yards from him, Chong, locked into his private hell, completely lost his mind.

     On Saturday, April 25, four days into his ordeal, someone in the DEA office discovered Mr. Chong. They had simply forgotten about him. When the bureaucrat discovered the incoherent, waste-covered, raving drug detainee he weighed 15 pounds less than when they had placed him into the room. Had he been there much longer the DEA people would have discovered a corpse.

     Rushed to Sharp Memorial Hospital, Daniel Chong, suffering from a failing kidney, a perforated lung, severe dehydration and numerous other ailments, was placed into an intensive care unit. He left the hospital four days later.

     On May 2, 2012 Daniel Chong's attorney announced his plan to file a $20 million lawsuit against the DEA.

     On August 1, 2013 the DEA settled the Chong case out of court for $4.1 million.         

The Gregory Randall Murder Case

     In May 2014, 57-year-old Gregory Randall and his 52-year-old girlfriend Angela Marie Cavalero lived in a house on Locus Road in Laughlintown, Pennsylvania in Westmoreland County just east of metropolitan Pittsburgh. They had lived together for slightly more than a year. Mr. Randall, a short-tempered violent man had a history of committing criminal assault and making terroristic threats.

     On May 7, 2014 Angela Cavelero lost her temper when Mr. Randall refused to accompany her to her mother's house for a visit. The argument intensified when she threw a TV frozen dinner into his face. Mr. Randall responded by picking up a hammer and beating Cavelero in the head 29 times. She died on the spot.

     After killing his girlfriend Mr. Randall fled the scene. The next day someone discovered Angela Cavelero's body and called the police.

     On May 13, 2014 police officers arrested Gregory Randall at his ex-girlfriend's house in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, a Pittsburgh area town in Allegheny County. The authorities returned the murder suspect to Westmoreland County where he was booked into the county jail on the charge of first-degree murder. Randall told his interrogators that because of his diminished mental capacity due to a traffic accident when he was 19 he had no memory of beating his girlfriend to death.

     In Pennsylvania a first-degree murder conviction calls for a mandatory sentence of life in prison.

     Randall's attorneys delayed his case by filing motions asking the court to find him mentally incompetent to stand trial.

     While in the Westmoreland County Jail awaiting his trial Mr. Randall told an inmate exactly how and why he had killed his girlfriend.

     In 2018 judge Meagan Bilik-DeFazio declared Randall mentally competent and set his trial date for September 9, 2019.

     On September 3, 2019 Gregory Randall, pursuant to an arrangement agreed upon by his attorneys and the Westmoreland County District Attorney, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder. Judge Bilik-DeFazio sentenced the 62-year-old to 40 to 60 years in prison. Given his age it is unlikely Mr. Randall will ever taste freedom again.

Robert And Tiffany Williams' Nouveau Riche Nightmare

     Robert and Tiffany Williams of Montoursville Pennsylvania thought they had $1,000 in the BB&T Bank. Then someone deposited an extra $120,000 into their account. Aware that their bloated bank account had to be some kind of a banking fluke, and that the money was therefore not theirs, they decided to spend a good bit of it anyway. Perhaps the mistake would go unnoticed. Why rock the boat by calling the bank and pointing out their error?

     And spend it they did. The couple purchased, among other things, a camper, a new SUV and a race car. Being generous with someone else's money, they gave $15,000 to friends in need. During a ten day period the couple withdrew more than $100,000 from their inflated account.

     In June 2019 a call from the bank put an end to the Williams' spending spree. They were informed what they already knew: the large deposit into their account had not been a gift from heaven but the result of a bank teller's mistake.

     As a result of the banking error the Robert and Tiffany Williams' account at the BB & T Bank was overdrawn by $107,416. The couple owned the bank that money and the debt had to be paid immediately or the authorities would be notified. Without that kind of cash Tiffany Williams asked the bank if she and her husband could pay back what they owed on an installment plan.

     Paying back the bank in installments was not an option. Robert and Tiffany Williams had spent money that belonged to someone else and now they had to pay it back in one lump sum or face the possibility of jail.

     In September 2019 Mr. and Mrs. Williams, after confessing they knew at the time they spent the money that it was not theirs, were booked into the county jail on three counts of felony theft. They each posted $25,000 bail and were released.

     The IRS has been known to send large tax refunds to the wrong people. The smart recipients take immediate steps to return the money. The ones that are not so smart treat the mistake as a windfall and end up facing federal charges of theft.

     In February 2020 after the couple pleaded guilty to felony theft the judge sentenced them to seven years probation and ordered them to repay the money they stole. 

Richard Bradford: The Man Who Beat The System

     In 1970 18-year-old Richard Bradford, a student at San Jose State College, belonged to a hold-up gang that robbed several grocery stores in the San Jose area. On November 2 of that year, during the hold-up of the Spartan Market, Bradford shot and killed Robert Burgess III. The following year a San Jose jury found Bradford guilt of first degree-murder and first-degree robbery. The judge sentenced the defendant to life in prison.

     In 1978, after serving seven years of his "life" sentence, the authorities released Richard Bradford on parole. While in prison in anticipation of his early release Mr. Bradford acquired a birth certificate and Social Security card under the name James Edward Heard.

     Less than two years after he walked out of prison Richard Bradford skipped out of his parole supervision. He took up the identity of James Edward Heard and moved to Pasadena, California. The convicted armed robber and murderer got married and became a prominent member of the community.

     By 2010 the parole violator under his fake identity owned a home and several other pieces of real estate. He operated the Eston Canyon Treatment Center, a Pasadena drug rehabilitation facility for wealthy addicts. No one in the community had any idea that Mr. Heard was a convicted murderer named Richard Bradford.

     A parole apprehension team in 2010 began an investigation to find and arrest Bradford for breaking the terms of his murder parole. Investigators caught a break in 2011 when two sets of fingerprints under the names Richard Bradford and James Edward Heard were found to have come from the same person.

     In March 2013 police officers arrested Mr. Bradford at a Home Depot store in the town of Monrovia just east of Pasadena. When taken into custody he was accompanied by his wife. (I don't know if she knew who he really was.) The 60-year-old parole violator was held without bail at the Men's Central Jail in Los Angeles.

     While this case is a gross failure of the state's criminal justice system, prison bureaucrats probably credited Bradford's successful life after his incarceration as evidence of how well California's corrections department rehabilitates its inmates. Because of Bradford's age, his status in the community and the fact California's jails were overcrowded, Richard Bradford was not be sent back to prison.

     He beat the system.