Author: MIL-OSI Publisher

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – First Assistant United States Attorney Charles C. Calenda and Thomas A. Greco, Special Agent in Charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Boston Field Division, in partnership with Colonel Oscar L. Perez, Chief of Police, Providence Police Department, announced federal charges against twenty-six individuals. The indictment alleged that several Providence-area street gangs, including the East Side gang, the Congress gang, and their various subsets and associates constituted a criminal enterprise. Three additional defendants are charged with related offenses. The charges are the result of a multi-agency investigation conducted by federal, state, and local law enforcement partners.

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

After an eight-day trial, a federal jury today returned a guilty verdict against Daniel Chartraw, 53, formerly of South Lake Tahoe and Lodi, finding him responsible for a wide-ranging series of fraudulent schemes involving cryptocurrency companies, sham business ventures, and false investment guarantees that caused substantial financial losses to numerous victims across the country.

Source: United States Department of Justice

A federal grand jury in the Southern District of Florida has returned an indictment charging a Florida man with federal hate crime and firearm offenses for allegedly attempting a mass shooting targeting Jewish victims because of their race and religion.

According to court records, Forrest Kendall Pemberton, 27, of Gainesville, armed himself with an AR-15-style rifle equipped with a silencer and traveled to the office of a non-profit organization dedicated to lobbying the U.S. government in support of Israel. On Dec. 23, 2024, he allegedly attempted to carry out a mass shooting targeting the organization’s employees because they were Jewish.

Pemberton is charged with attempted hate crime, using and carrying a firearm during a crime of violence, and possession of a short-barreled rifle. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of life in prison on the attempted hate crime count, a mandatory consecutive sentence of up to 30 years in prison on the firearm count, and a maximum penalty of five years in prison on the possession count.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones for the Southern District of Florida, and Special Agent in Charge Jason Carley of the FBI Jacksonville Field Office made the announcement.

FBI Jacksonville is investigating the case, with assistance from FBI Miami; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Miami Field Office; the Gainesville Police Department; and the Tallahassee Police Department.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Abbie D. Waxman of the National Security Division for the Southern District of Florida and Special Litigation Counsel Christopher J. Perras and Trial Attorney Manpreet “Monica” Uppal-Gupta of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division are prosecuting the case.

An indictment is merely an allegation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

A federal grand jury has returned a five‑count indictment charging former employees of the Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office with conspiracy to commit bank fraud and multiple counts of bank fraud stemming from an alleged long‑running scheme to steal taxpayer funds and misappropriate conservator account assets, announced U.S. Attorney Matthew L. Harvey.

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

A Poplar man who was indicted on two unrelated charges was sentenced today to 18 months followed by five years of supervised release for the first charge, and to 26 months followed by three years of supervised release for the second.

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

Seth Jason, 65, of Edgewater, Maryland, was sentenced in U.S. District Court today to 30 months in federal prison in connection with a 15-month campaign of intimidation in which he made anonymous death threats against former U.S. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, announced U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro. 

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA – ERIK ROBERTO MACHADO-MENCIA, a/k/a “Roberto Machado-Mencia,” (“MACHADO-MENCIA”), age 37, a native of Honduras, pled guilty on June 11, 2026, to re-entry of a removed alien, in violation of Title 8, United States Code, Section 1326(a), announced U.S. Attorney David I. Courcelle.

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA – PATRICK GARLAND (“GARLAND”), 40, California resident, was sentenced on June 10, 2026, for conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen goods, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 371, and interstate transportation of stolen goods, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 2314, announced United States Attorney David I. Courcelle.

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

The Justice Department notified the U.S. District Court that it intends to intervene in a lawsuit filed by an order of Catholic nuns — the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne — against the State of New York, challenging a State law that requires housing biological men with women in the Sisters’ residential hospice care program. The United States’ supports the Sisters of Hawthorne’s argument that the New York law violates the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection of religious groups.

“States should take notice that they cannot require Americans to abandon their religious beliefs in the name of woke gender ideology,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “For more than a century, the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne have provided free palliative care to indigent cancer patients in their last days. New York’s law would force these religious women to choose between their faith and their license if they wish to continue serving the dying.”

The United States’ Complaint-in-Intervention alleges that New York Public Health Law § 2803-c-2 violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause by requiring religious facilities to meet requirements that violate religious beliefs, while excusing non-religious facilities from those same requirements. New York’s law requires long-term care facilities to assign rooms to transgender residents based on “gender identity” rather than biological sex, and facility staff to use names and pronouns reflecting gender identity rather than biological sex. New York’s law permits facilities to refuse opposite-sex room assignments based on secular clinical judgments — that the assignment would cause psychological harm to a roommate — but offers no equivalent accommodation based on a religious judgment that the assignment would cause spiritual harm. The Acting Attorney General certified this case pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 2000h-2, which authorizes the United States to intervene in equal protection cases of general public importance.

The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne operate Rosary Hill Home, a skilled nursing facility that provides free palliative care to indigent cancer patients in their last days, and welcome every patient. Catholic teaching holds that biological sex is God-given and cannot be morally changed, and that identifying a person by another sex is religiously prohibited lying. Consistent with that teaching, Rosary Hill houses patients in single-sex rooms based on patients’ biological sex, refers to patients by pronouns reflecting their biological sex, and performs “very personal acts of care such as painting women’s fingernails, combing their hair, changing them into fresh nightgowns, and arranging flowers in their rooms.” 

The Civil Rights Division’s Disability Rights Section is handling this matter. The Section enforces federal civil rights laws that protect disabled individuals, including those who receive palliative care in long-term care facilities. For more information about the Civil Rights Division and its work, please visit www.justice.gov/crt.

Members of the public who believe they have experienced religious discrimination may file a complaint at civilrights.justice.gov.