Category: MIL-OSI

Source: United States Department of Justice

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

MUSKOGEE, OKLAHOMA – The United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Oklahoma announced that Carlos Banegas-Contreras, age 47, an illegal alien from Honduras, was sentenced to 27 months in prison for one count of Conspiracy to Commit Bank Fraud.On October 6, 2025, Banegas-Contreras pleaded guilty to the charge in federal district court.According to investigators, in June of 2023, Banegas-Contreras and others conspired to use fake identification cards to cash 178 fraudulent paychecks totaling $299,474.00 at three check-cashing businesses and at five branches of a local bank.  The fraudulent paychecks were designed to look like they had been issued by a building materials supply company in the Eastern District of Oklahoma.

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA – TERRELL KELLEY (“KELLEY”), age 34, was sentenced to a ninety-seven (97) month term of imprisonment on July 14, 2026, by U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan. KELLEY was ordered to pay a $600 mandatory special assessment fee and serve a six (6) year term of supervised release upon release from imprisonment, announced United States Attorney David I. Courcelle. 

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

A federal grand jury returned an indictment yesterday charging a Memphis woman with preparing false tax returns for others and willfully failing to file her own tax returns.

According to the indictment, between 2021 and 2024, Lynette Hogue prepared and filed with the IRS false and fraudulent income tax returns for clients of the tax preparation business where she worked. These tax returns allegedly contained false and fraudulent items, which generated refunds the clients were not entitled to receive. 

According to the indictment, Hogue willfully failed to file her own tax returns for these same years, even though she earned substantial income from her tax return preparation business and was required to file by law.

Hogue is charged with 29 counts of willfully aiding and assisting the preparation and presentation of false tax returns and four counts of willfully failing to file a tax return. If convicted, she faces up to three years in prison for each false return count and one year in prison for each count of failing to file a tax return.

Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald of the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division and U.S. Attorney D. Michael Dunavant for the Western District of Tennessee made the announcement.

Trial Attorneys Isaiah Boyd III and Matthew C. Hicks of the Criminal Division’s Tax Section 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.

On April 7, the Department of Justice announced the creation of the National Fraud Enforcement Division (“Fraud Division”). The Fraud Division is laser-focused on investigating and prosecuting those who commit fraud against the American people. The Department’s work to combat fraud supports President Trump’s Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, a whole-of-government effort chaired by Vice President J.D. Vance to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse within Federal benefit programs.

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

Seattle –A 69-year-old former resident of Rhode Island, Texas, and Chicago, was sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Seattle for three federal felonies connected to his 2021 scheme to smuggle duffle bags full of drugs across the strait bordering Washington State and Canada via watercraft, announced First Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Neil Floyd.  

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

MUSKOGEE, OKLAHOMA – The United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Oklahoma announced that Carlos Banegas-Contreras, age 47, a Honduran national, was sentenced to 27 months in prison for one count of Conspiracy to Commit Bank Fraud.On October 6, 2025, Banegas-Contreras pleaded guilty to the charge in federal district court.According to investigators, in June of 2023, Banegas-Contreras and others conspired to use fake identification cards to cash 178 fraudulent paychecks totaling $299,474.00 at three check-cashing businesses and at five branches of a local bank.  The fraudulent paychecks were designed to look like they had been issued by a building materials supply company in the Eastern District of Oklahoma.

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

MUSKOGEE, OKLAHOMA – The United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Oklahoma announced that Kelly Von Morck, age 36, of Hartshorne, Oklahoma, was sentenced to 46 months in prison for one count of Unlawful User of Controlled Substance in Possession of a Firearm, 46 months  for one count of Unlawful User of Controlled Substance in Possession of Ammunition, and 46 months for one count of User of a Controlled Substance in Possession of Explosives.  The Court ordered the terms to be served concurrently.On August 19, 2025, Morck pleaded guilty to the charges in federal district court.  According to investigators, on October 20, 2024, Hartshorne Police officers, Pittsburg County deputies, ATF task force officers and special agents, and the OHP bomb squad responded to an explosion in a Hartshorne neighborhood originating from Morck’s residence.Upon arriving on the scene, law enforcement discovered property damage indicating a large explosion and Morck suffering from third degree burns.  Morck was life-flighted to a Tulsa hospital for care, where he tested positive for amphetamines, cocaine, cannabinoids, and fentanyl.  A lab for making homemade explosives was discovered within the residence, and outbuildings on the property were found to contain bulk quantities of ingredients and precursors for manufacturing explosives, as well as improvised explosive devices, destructive devices, multiple firearms, and ammunition. Investigators securing the crime scene also recovered quantities of methamphetamine, marijuana, LSD, MDMA, steroids, and psychedelic mushrooms.In June of 2025, ATF returned to Morck’s residence with search warrants and discovered Morck, an unlawful user addicted to a controlled substance, in possession of narcotics, a firearm, ammunition, and additional suspected explosives and destructive devices.

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA – MILTON EDILBERTO ESCOTO-GALINDO (“ESCOTO-GALINDO”), age 44, a native of Honduras, was indicted on July 16, 2026, for illegal reentry of a previously removed alien, in violation of Title 8, United States Code, Section 1326(a), announced United States Attorney David I. Courcelle. 

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

On July 17, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee entered an order revoking the citizenship of Sead Miljkovic a/k/a Sead Dukic, who hid his true identity to come to the United States in 1996 and, ultimately, to naturalize as a U.S. citizen in 2007. The court found that Miljkovic illegally procured his citizenship because he lacked the requisite good moral character to naturalize, based on false testimony he provided to Government officials. Miljkovic is a former member of the security forces of the short-lived Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia (“APZB”), who was subject to an arrest warrant issued by a court in Bosnia for war crimes against civilians when the U.S. Government granted him naturalized citizenship.

The warrant, issued on January 23, 2007, led to an INTERPOL Red Notice alleging that, on June 18, 1994, and while acting as a member of the APZB security forces, Miljkovic physically mistreated civilians who were opposed to the APZB government. According to the Red Notice, Miljkovic and accomplices beat twelve civilians with wooden bats and locked them in a morgue for five days without access to light or water.  Miljkovic, who consented to the judgment revoking his U.S. citizenship, has not yet appeared before a Bosnian court on these charges.

“This Administration has made it a priority to protect the sanctity of U.S. citizenship,” said Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Civil Division. “If an alien commits heinous acts and comes here to try to hide from the consequences, we will not permit it.”

This case was civilly prosecuted by the Justice Department’s Office of Immigration Litigation, Denaturalization Unit, with assistance from the U.S Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Tennessee, and ICE’s Human Right Violator Law Division, after investigation by ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations.

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

Yesterday, at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn, Edixon Briceno Montilla was charged in a criminal complaint with the sexual exploitation of a minor.  Montilla was arrested yesterday and made his initial appearance before United States Magistrate Judge James R. Cho and was ordered detained pending trial.