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Dec 5, 2023 | 
post-gazette.com | Torsten Ove
A woman who embezzled nearly $400,000 from the credit union were she worked and then tried to cover it up by setting fire to a safe has been sentenced to 30 months in prison. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Pittsburgh announced that District Judge Marilyn Horan imposed that sentence on Patty Lynn Mavrakis, 65, of Rostraver, last week.
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Nov 29, 2023 | 
post-gazette.com | Torsten Ove |Milan Simonich
The man had also served a prior sentence for a murder-for-hire plot The man convicted of shooting a state trooper at a convenience store in Aliquippa last year was sentenced to decades in prison.
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Oct 20, 2023 | 
unionprogress.com | Torsten Ove
A Monroeville tax preparer admitted Friday that he prepared bogus returns for clients following an investigation by the criminal division of the IRS. Harvey Smith Jr., 58, who lives in New Kensington, waived indictment by grand jury and pleaded guilty to what’s called an information charging him with willfully aiding in the preparation of a false tax return.
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Oct 19, 2023 | 
unionprogress.com | Torsten Ove
Speaking through a Burmese interpreter, a Penn Hills man on Thursday admitted to extorting young girls in several states into sending him nude images and later videos of themselves engaging in sex acts under threat of exposing the images to others online. Kaung Myat Kyaw, 23, who lives on Jefferson Road but has been in jail since his arrest in 2021, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to seven counts related to coercion of minors.
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Oct 19, 2023 | 
unionprogress.com | Torsten Ove
A Greene County man admitted in federal court this week that he drove a young teen girl to West Virginia for sex and now faces at least a decade in federal prison. James Jordan, 31, had been charged in state court with kidnapping a 14-year-old in 2022 after she had been reported missing to Waynesburg police.
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Oct 18, 2023 | 
unionprogress.com | Torsten Ove
A former employee of a pharmaceutical distribution center in New Castle has been indicted on federal charges related to replacing oxycodone pills with regular aspirin and Tylenol tablets. Shane Jon-Paul White was named in a one-count indictment handed up Tuesday in U.S. District Court charging him with tampering with consumer products. White worked at McKesson Corp.’s distribution center in New Castle. The company is a wholesaler that distributes drugs to pharmacies.
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Oct 17, 2023 | 
unionprogress.com | Torsten Ove
Rachel Powell, the “pink hat lady” who smashed a window at the Capitol and shouted instructions to other rioters during the 2021 insurrection, was hoping for probation Tuesday at her sentencing in Washington. She didn’t get it. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth gave her 57 months behind bars. The term was short of the eight years prosecutors wanted but far more than the home detention sentence she and her lawyer had requested.
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Oct 15, 2023 | 
unionprogress.com | Torsten Ove
A man from Ghana and an accused cohort in Florida are under indictment in Pittsburgh in an email scam that cost an unnamed Washington, D.C., university some $600,000 through a fraudulent Pittsburgh-based Bank of New York Mellon wire transfer, federal prosecutors said. The FBI calls such crimes “business email compromise” schemes and they are often carried about by fraudsters from West Africa.
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Oct 12, 2023 | 
unionprogress.com | Torsten Ove
The “pink hat lady” who smashed a window at the Capitol with a heavy cardboard tube and an ice ax for all the world to see on video and then yelled instructions to other rioters through a bullhorn wants probation when a judge sentences her next week, but prosecutors are seeking eight years behind bars. Rachel Powell of Grove City, a 43-year-old mother of eight, says she’s remorseful for what she did.
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Oct 11, 2023 | 
unionprogress.com | Torsten Ove
Eric Olshan, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, will join six other top prosecutors from around the country to serve on Attorney General Merrick Garland’s advisory committee, the Department of Justice announced Tuesday. The committee was created in 1973 to advise the AG on policy and procedures impacting the 94 U.S. attorneys’ offices across the United States.
