The reaction followed early results in California’s top-two primary system, where all candidates appear on the same ballot and the two highest vote-getters advance to the general election regardless of party. Republican Steve Hilton, a British-born former Fox News commentator, initially led a large field of 61 candidates for governor.

In Los Angeles, Republican Spencer Pratt also drew attention when early results showed him in second place in the mayor’s race after a campaign that included a series of artificial intelligence-generated parody videos targeting Mayor Karen Bass.

But as county election offices continued to count ballots, the standings shifted. Pratt later fell to third place. By Monday, Hilton remained in second place in the governor’s race, behind Democratic frontrunner Xavier Becerra, though his margin over billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer had narrowed to about five percentage points. The final outcome remained uncertain.

The changing numbers prompted complaints from some conservative media figures, podcasters and social media users about the length of California’s ballot-counting process. Some went further, alleging fraud without presenting evidence.

President Donald Trump joined those accusations during an interview aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” accusing California election officials of “cheating” because ballots were still being counted.

When interviewer Kristen Welker asked whether he had evidence, Trump responded, “All I have to do is look.”

Welker pressed him, noting that California’s vote-counting process routinely takes time. Trump rejected that explanation and called the elections “rigged,” also attacking NBC and the program. He eventually ended the interview, removed his microphone and left.

Other Republican officials amplified concerns about the count. House Speaker Mike Johnson said Monday that “everybody knows instinctively something is wrong.” On Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli posted on X that federal prosecutors were working with the FBI on “multiple election fraud investigations,” but he did not provide details.

There has been no public evidence presented showing widespread fraud in California’s primary.

California’s vote count often stretches for days or weeks because of the state’s election rules, especially its heavy reliance on mail ballots. The process has grown more time-consuming as lawmakers expanded access to voting over several decades.

Those changes were largely championed by Democrats, who have argued that easier access to ballots increases participation. Critics have long contended that the system benefits Democratic candidates in close races, but a slow count itself is not evidence of illegal activity.

The modern shift began after Democrats suffered a series of legislative setbacks in the late 1970s. Following the 1980 census, Democratic leaders redrew legislative and congressional districts and made absentee voting by mail more widely available.

That expansion did not immediately deliver the advantage Democrats expected. In 1982, Republicans made effective use of absentee ballots, helping George Deukmejian narrowly defeat Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley in the governor’s race despite polls that had suggested Bradley was favored to win.

Over time, California continued to broaden voter access. The state adopted automatic voter registration through the Department of Motor Vehicles and allowed voters to register on Election Day. The 2016 Voter Choice Act further encouraged mail voting while reducing the number of traditional polling places in participating counties.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, California has mailed ballots automatically to all registered voters. That change dramatically increased the number of mail ballots that county election workers must verify and process.

Election experts Eric McGhee of the Public Policy Institute of California and Mindy Romero of USC’s Center for Inclusive Democracy recently noted that the added volume has slowed the count. Each mail ballot requires signature verification to confirm that it was submitted by the proper voter, a security step intended to strengthen confidence in election results.

That safeguard, however, also contributes to the delay that critics have seized on to question the count.

The result is a recurring tension in California elections: rules designed to make voting more accessible and secure also make final results slower to arrive. As close races continue to develop after election night, the drawn-out process has increasingly become a target for political attacks and unsupported claims of fraud.

Original source: CalMatters

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In a 4-0 vote without comment Tuesday, the county Board of Supervisors formally approved the Executive Office’s revised “anonymous incident reporting system.”

Anyone associated with county government who has witnessed or become aware of alleged acts that conflict with the county’s Code of Ethics can file reports via www.auditorcontroller.org, or 833-590-0004.

The phone number features prompts, while the website directs visitors to a site listed at the top of the home page designated “Report Fraud, Waste and Abuse 24/7.”

Previously, other online and telephonic reporting methods were available, but they’ve since been deactivated.

“It is the duty of every employee to report any known violation of this (ethical conduct) policy, or what would appear to a reasonable person to be a violation of this policy,” according to board Policy C-35. “Examples of reportable offenses include theft, conflicts of interest, misuse of county equipment or vehicles, embezzlement, bribes and kickbacks, abuse of work hours (and) inappropriate use of county credit cards.”

Policy C-35 was first implemented in January 1991 and later underwent revisions based on the California Citizen Complaint Act of 1997 and related legislation.

The county’s auditor-controller, currently Ben Benoit, is recognized as the initial processor of fraud, waste and abuse complaints, which are then assigned to the appropriate investigating agency, inside or outside the county.

“County employees shall adhere to and uphold the county’s Code of Ethics both in practice and in spirit,” according to the policy. “It is expected that employees act in the public’s interest first and not their own. It is further expected that their behavior, both on the job and off, reflects positively on the county, its reputation and its employees.”

The post See Fraud, Waste In RivCo? Report It Over New Number, Web Portal appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

On Feb. 23, officers were dispatched to Sanderson and Stetson avenues in Hemet, where several motorists had reported panhandlers weaving through traffic, asking for donations, according to the Hemet Police Department.

The sign they carried displayed a heart-tugging photo of a teary-eyed boy with claims that he — a 10-year-old named Alex — had died in a traffic accident.

Officers watched the suspects via surveillance cameras and said they got into a vehicle while counting the money they collected. The vehicle was later located in the 100 block of North Sanderson Avenue, where officers conducted a traffic stop.

The driver, Marius Stan, and passenger, Malvina Stan, were questioned about the child on their sign but gave conflicting statements about his identity and supposed death, according to the department.

Police determined the pair had been collecting money fraudulently.

Further investigation revealed that the child’s picture had been taken from a 2011 Romanian news article. The article revealed that the child had not died in a car accident but had gone missing for a day before he was found safe at a local park.

Police also found multiple forms of identification, EBT cards, passports, and other evidence indicating a larger fraudulent operation, police said.

Both suspects were arrested and booked into a Riverside County jail on charges related to obtaining money under false pretenses. Authorities are continuing to investigate the scope of the scheme.

The post 2 RivCo Panhandling Suspects Arrested In Scheme Of Fake Boy’s Funeral appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The text arrived midday, saying a delivery to me was on hold. To fix the problem, all I had to do was click on a web link and enter my ZIP Code.

“Have a great day from the USPS team!” the text said.

The awkwardly worded message (with bad punctuation and an international phone number) was clearly not from the Postal Service. And if I can hazard a wild guess, I don’t think the senders really wanted me to have a great day.

They wanted to rip me off and, so, a word to the wise this holiday season:

Watch your wallet.

Fraud is a year-round, multibillion-dollar international enterprise. But for thieves, the season of joy is a wide-open window of opportunity, as AARP warned Nov. 18:

“With scammers looking to take advantage of consumers from all angles, new AARP survey research reveals that people need to be vigilant this holiday season as they buy gifts, book their travel arrangements, and donate to charities.”

Many of the scams are run by sophisticated international syndicates, said Kathy Stokes, director of fraud prevention at AARP’s Fraud Watch Network. Those crooks are working every channel, fishing for victims by email, phone calls, texts, fliers and regular mail.

Unwitting people are forking over money via gift cards, cryptocurrency, credit cards, cash and wire transfers. Losses often are virtually impossible to recover because the money is on foreign soil before the victims know they’ve been robbed.

Stokes said that in one common ripoff, thieves are going after people who own timeshares they’re trying to dump.

“There’s all this paperwork that makes it look legitimate, like you’re paying to get out of the timeshare,” Stokes said. But the crooks are pocketing thousands of dollars while the target is still stuck with the timeshare.

Last week, in a national conference on scams targeting older adults, Deborah Royster of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau warned that consumers are being wiped out in a flash.

“Retirement savings and other resources that people have earned over a lifetime, and depend on,” Royster said, “can be gone in an instant.”

In that same conference, Virginia lawyer Julie M. Strandlie said her 85-year-old mother lost $80,000 between Thanksgiving and Christmas five years ago in a common scam that began with “flashing graphics and pounding voices” on her computer screen, warning of a virus.

“There’s a number to call for help, but it’s not the real Microsoft,” Strandlie said.

Her mother fell for the ruse, giving the criminals remote access to unlock her frozen computer. She was then duped into believing they had deposited money into her account, and she needed to pay it back in cash and gift cards from Best Buy and Target.

Steve McFarland, president and CEO of the Better Business Bureau region that runs from Palo Alto to Long Beach, said his office is getting 1,100 consumer complaints of all types each and every day.

He wasn’t kidding and repeated the number.

McFarland and other sources say a greater percentage of millennials report fraud than do older adults, but the latter group suffers greater losses. And across the age spectrum, McFarland said, gift card scams are hot right now.

Bar codes on those cards can be tampered with or photographed by someone before they’re sold, McFarland said. The buyer of the card goes to a checkout stand and puts, let’s say, $100 on the card to be redeemed at Target, Burger King or any number of establishments.

But when the recipient goes to redeem it, the funds are gone. It happened last year to L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn, who bought a $100 VISA gift card for a nephew who found that it wasn’t worth a nickel. Hahn later warned of the scam, along with McFarland, on L.A.’s Eyewitness News.

“It’s called gift card draining and these scammers have found several slick ways to victimize unsuspecting shoppers,” Hahn said.

In addition to outright scams, this is a time of year when solicitations for charitable donations can fill your mailbox.

“A lot of charities are trying to close out strong, and criminals know that and are vying for the same dollars,” Stokes said.

If it’s not an established organization that’s known for its good work, Stokes advised going to the Better Business Bureau’s give.org website, where you can type in the name of the charity to find out whether it’s legit. You can also find out what percentage of donations go to the cause versus overhead costs.

Your best policy, unfortunately, is to be suspicious of everything. I recently got a letter with my mortgage lender’s name in the window and opened it to find a warning that this was my “FINAL NOTICE” to avoid a monthly payment increase.

It looked hinky, and on the back page, in fine print, I learned that the mail was from a lender unaffiliated with my mortgage company.

If you see “final notice,” “urgent” or “benefit disbursement enclosed,” don’t even bother opening the envelope.

A friend shared a tall stack of mail that keeps coming for his mother, who died months ago, and as I sifted through it I found one attempt after another to separate her from her money. “Copy of Final Check Enclosed,” said one, and in the cellophane window was what looked like a check for $437.18 that said “Pay to the order of …”

But it wasn’t a check, of course. It was a solicitation from a lobbying firm claiming it will fight to preserve Social Security funding (and by the way, she had a lot of mail from organizations claiming they were out to do the same).

The fake check was described as an example of what she stood to lose if she didn’t immediately support the cause by pulling out her credit card and making an “urgent donation” to keep Social Security solvent.

And then there were solicitations from organizations representing a Noah’s Ark of endangered animals. Look, I’m an animal lover, but how does one begin to sort through all the pleas?

Save the pigs. The horses. The bees. The lions. The donkeys.

“Sunday, a baby donkey was ripped from his mother and brutalized,” said one envelope.

Lots of appeals for dogs, too. One included the photo of a dog with amazing verbal skills, judging by the quote attributed to the canine: “I wish for no one else to be hurt the way humans have hurt me.”

I feel for the dog, but if he can actually speak, let’s get him an agent and send him out on tour so the pup can raise a fortune for his cause.

Of course, there are plenty of good charities out there that are worthy of your generosity, but be careful.

With solicitations. With email. With texts. With phone calls.

All of it.

Banks should be doing more to prevent repeated, questionable, out-of-the-ordinary withdrawals and wire transfers. The gift card industry ought to be able to rein in rampant fraud with smarter security measures.

And people of all ages need to be more discerning, refuse to provide personal information such as Social Security numbers, and get some advice from a trusted friend or loved one before signing any checks or doing business with strangers.

Last year I wrote about two retired L.A. residents, a former teacher and a former banker, who were swindled out of roughly $80,000 apiece in internet scams. Earlier this year I wrote about a Redwood City woman who was taken for $1.8 million, and an Alhambra woman, Alice Lin, who lost $720,000 in an “investment” scheme introduced to her by a man she met on a chat app.

I reached out to Lin, who had some good advice on all forms of communication from sources you don’t know or trust.

“Do not respond,” Lin said. “Don’t touch it.”

The post Column: It’s the season for scams, so here’s a piece of advice: Never do business with strangers appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The lawyers filed papers with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals asking a three-judge panel to reverse his conviction and assign the case to a new judge for a retrial, saying the trial judge “imposed a draconian quarter-century sentence on this first-time, non-violent offender” after they contend he hurried the jury into reaching a one-day verdict to cap off a complex four-week trial.

“Sam Bankman-Fried was never presumed innocent. He was presumed guilty — before he was even charged. He was presumed guilty by the media. He was presumed guilty by the FTX debtor estate and its lawyers. He was presumed guilty by federal prosecutors eager for quick headlines. And he was presumed guilty by the judge who presided over his trial,” the lawyers wrote.

They said the passing of time has cast Bankman-Fried in a better light.

“From day one, the prevailing narrative — initially spun by the lawyers who took over FTX, quickly adopted by their contacts at the U.S. Attorney’s Office — was that Bankman-Fried had stolen billions of dollars of customer funds, driven FTX to insolvency, and caused billions in losses,” the attorney said.

“Now, nearly two years later, a very different picture is emerging — one confirming FTX was never insolvent, and in fact had assets worth billions to repay its customers. But the jury at Bankman-Fried’s trial never got to see that picture,” they added.

Bankman-Fried, 32, was convicted last November of fraud and conspiracy a year after his companies collapsed into bankruptcy as investors rushed to withdraw funds. A jury concluded that some of their money had been improperly spent on real estate, investments, celebrity endorsements, political contributions and lavish lifestyles.

At its height, FTX was treated as a pioneer and darling in the emerging cryptocurrency industry, with a Super Bowl advertisement, testimony by Bankman-Fried before Congress and endorsements from celebrities such as quarterback Tom Brady and comedian Larry David.

Bankman-Fried was arrested in December 2022 following his extradition from the Bahamas, just weeks after his company filed for bankruptcy and days after some of his former top executives began cooperating with federal prosecutors. Some of them testified against him at trial.

He initially remained under strict bail conditions at his parents’ home in Palo Alto, California, but Judge Lewis A. Kaplan in Manhattan revoked his bail shortly before the trial after concluding that Bankman-Fried was trying to influence likely witnesses, including an ex-girlfriend who had served as chief executive at Alameda Research, a crypto hedge fund.

The fallen mogul is serving a 25-year sentence after he was sentenced in March in what a prosecutor once described as one of the biggest financial frauds in U.S. history.

A prosecutor’s spokesperson declined to comment Friday.

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Like his mother Janice Turner, Kingston is accused of multiple counts of fraud and theft, according to the Broward Sheriff’s Office arrest warrant. The “Beautiful Girls” singer — who was reportedly in California for performances — was taken into custody in Fort Irwin and booked into jail in San Bernardino County.

“This evening, police in Fort Irwin, Calif., arrested Kisean Anderson, aka Sean Kingston, without incident on a Broward Sheriff’s Office arrest warrant for numerous fraud and theft charges,” the Broward Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.

“We were in the process of having him return to Florida after his show,” Bob Rosenblatt, an attorney representing Kingston, told NBC News, adding that the singer would waive extradition. “We want him back asap so we can show this is merely a civil case and not criminal. We look forward to challenging this case in court. “

Following the raid conducted by Broward Sheriff deputies and Davie Police SWAT, an attorney named Dennis Card, who represents Ver Ver Entertainment, told NBC Miami that the raid was conducted in connection to a lawsuit the company filed alleging that Kingston never paid for luxury items — namely a 232″ TV and premium sound system — he had purchased.

“[Kingston] likes having bling, he likes showing off, he’s a showman,” Card said. “My client has a $150,000 television sound system that’s in there, there’s also about $1 million worth of watches that are in there, there’s a $80,000 custom bed that was ordered. This is an organized systematic fraud.”

“[Kingston’s] got basically a script, he says that he works with Justin Bieber, and that he obviously puts on a big show here, this is a rental house, he doesn’t own it, and he lures people using his celebrity into having them release things without him paying for it and then he simply never pays,” Card added; Kingston and Bieber recorded the song “Eenie Meenie” together in 2010.

Card added, “He’s got judgements against him for procuring more than $1 million in watches without paying for them. This is just an ongoing pattern for Sean,” alluding to previous lawsuits against Kingston including a $1 million unpaid jewelry bill.

Kingston’s mother, Turner, has legal issues dating back to at least 2006, when she pled guilty to four counts of filing false loan applications and one count of bank fraud involving $132,000 in stolen funds. She was sentenced to 16 months in prison, followed by five years of supervised release. Turner also is currently embroiled in a civil lawsuit seeking $100,000 in unpaid rent for a different Florida home.

Following his mother’s arrest but prior to his own, Kingston posted on his Instagram Stories, “People love negative energy! I am good and so is my mother!. My lawyers are handling everything as we speak.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A judge’s ruling that Donald Trump committed fraud as he built his real-estate empire tarnishes the former president’s image as a business titan and could strip him of his authority to make major decisions about the future of his marquee properties in his home state.

The Tuesday order rescinds business licenses as punishment, which could make it difficult or impossible for some of Trump’s companies to operate in New York if not successfully appealed.

Trump’s attorney vowed to appeal, calling the decision “un-American” and part of a campaign to thwart his second bid for the presidency.

Here are some of the key points of the case, and what happens next:

WHAT DID THE JUDGE SAY?

Trump and his company massively overvalued his assets, creating “a fantasy world” on the financial statements he gave to banks and others, Judge Arthur Engoron found in a lawsuit brought by the New York attorney general.

Trump’s Florida Mar-a-Lago club, for example, was overvalued on one financial statement by as much as 2,300%, the judge found.

The former president also lied about the size of his Trump Tower penthouse apartment, claiming it was nearly three times its actual size and worth $327 million, according to the ruling.

That discrepancy from a real estate developer describing his own longtime home “can only be considered fraud,” the judge wrote.

The exaggerated picture of Trump’s wealth could have gotten him more favorable loan terms or lowered insurance costs, the attorney general has argued.

The judge rejected Trump’s contention that a disclaimer on the financial statements absolved him of any responsibility to verify they were truthful.

HOW DOES THIS AFFECT TRUMP’S BUSINESSES?

Under the ruling, limited-liability companies that control some of his key properties, such as 40 Wall Street, will be “dissolved” and authority over how to run them handed over to receivers.

The judge’s order, if not successfully appealed, could mean Trump would no longer have any say in who to hire or fire, who to rent office space to, whether to pay back loans or take on new ones, essentially make any decision.

Lisa Renee Pomerantz, a lawyer in Bohemia, New York, who has helped businesses establish LLCs in the state, said canceling certificates is a significant order because you can’t operate without them.

“Their right to conduct business has been revoked,” Pomerantz said. “He’s just lost control of these entities.”

Importantly, the ruling also removes one of the bedrock protections of business suggested by the words “limited liability” themselves: Forcing lenders and other creditors, like victors in a legal judgment, to only go after assets and cash held by the business, not the owner’s stock and cash and other holdings.

WILL TRUMP’S PROPERTIES BE SOLD OFF?

It’s unclear.

Engoron tabled a discussion of whether just a step was required by his order when asked by Trump’s lawyers Wednesday, responding: “I’m not prepared to issue a ruling right now.”

What is clear, though, is that it is unusual for such valuable LLCs containing office buildings and other properties to lose business licenses, so trustees might not be inclined to make such a drastic move.

And they’re unlikely to feel pressure to sell from lenders if they are still getting paid. Sorting out who gets what from the proceeds of a sale would be a “logistical nightmare” if other claimants to Trump properties come forth, Thomas said. That group could include the attorney general herself if she wins on her other counts and Trump has to pay a fine.

If the trustees do decide to sell, Trump will get the cash from whatever is left after paying creditors.

The Trump Organization owes $100 million on Trump Tower. Lenders to 40 Wall Street, Trump’s most valuable skyscraper, were owed more than $125 million earlier this year.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

The judge will also weigh a possible $250 million in penalties and some remaining claims in a non-jury trial slated to start Oct. 2

Still, the ruling on one count during what’s known as the summary judgment phase could prove the most significant outcome of the case, said Will Thomas, an assistant professor of business law at the University of Michigan.

“This first count, even though it is easier in some respects from the other counts, it lets one of the biggest remedies kick in: ‘We’re going to stop you from doing business,’” Thomas said. “This is one of the worst outcomes you can get.”

Barring a successful appeal, Thomas said he doesn’t see how the Trump Organization can avoid losing control of his LLCs containing entities such as 40 Wall Street, Trump Tower and an estate outside New York City called Seven Springs. One strategy, establishing new LLCs in another state, is nearly impossible with legal claims such as a lien by a creditor or, in this case, a judge’s ruling.

“If someone is coming after your house, you can’t sell it to me for $1 and have me sell it back to you after your creditor goes away,” Thomas said. “You’re going to run into what’s called fraudulent transfer.”

In fact, Trump was accused by the attorney general of already trying to do that when he set up a Delaware company last year. A Trump lawyer denied any improper intention with the move, but Engoron was worried enough to appoint an independent monitor, Barbara Jones, to watch over Trump’s company, a role she retains under Tuesday’s ruling.

HOW DID THIS START?

New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, filed the civil lawsuit against Trump and the Trump Organization a year ago. It accused them of padding his bottom line by billions of dollars by routinely inflating the value of assets including skyscrapers, golf courses and the Mar-a-Lago estate. It came after Manhattan prosecutors declined to bring criminal charges over the same conduct.

Trump’s lawyers had asked the judge to throw out the case, arguing that there wasn’t any evidence the public was harmed and many of the allegations in the lawsuit were barred by the statute of limitations.

WHAT IS TRUMP SAYING?

In a series of statements on his Truth Social site, Trump insisted his company had “done a magnificent job” and the decision “horrible and un-American.”

His son Eric Trump said his father’s claims about Mar-a-Lago were correct, and the property is “speculated to be worth well over a billion dollars,” according to a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Trump’s lawyer called the decision an attempt to “seize control of private property.”

This case is one of several faced by Trump, who has been criminally indicted four times in the last six months. He’s accused in Georgia and Washington, D.C. of plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss, of hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, and in Manhattan of falsifying business records related to hush money paid on his behalf.

The Trump Organization, meanwhile, was fined $1.6 million in an unrelated case after being convicted of tax fraud. James’s office has also previously sued Trump for misusing charitable funds, resulting in an order to give $2 million to charity as his own foundation was shut down.

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MEXICO CITY (AP) — Supposed aliens landed in Mexico’s Congress but there were no saucer-shaped UFOs hovering over the historic building or bright green invaders like those seen in Hollywood films.

The specter of little green men visited Mexico City as lawmakers heard testimony Tuesday from individuals suggesting the possibility that extraterrestrials might exist. The researchers hailed from Mexico, the United States, Japan and Brazil.

The session, unprecedented in the Mexican Congress, took place two months after a similar one before the U.S. Congress in which a former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer claimed his country has probably been aware of “non-human” activity since the 1930s.

Mexican journalist José Jaime Maussan presented two boxes with supposed mummies found in Peru, which he and others consider “non-human beings that are not part of our terrestrial evolution.”

The shriveled bodies with shrunken, warped heads left those in the chamber aghast and quickly kicked up a social media fervor.

“It’s the queen of all evidence,” Maussan claimed. “That is, if the DNA is showing us that they are non-human beings and that there is nothing that looks like this in the world, we should take it as such.”

But he warned that he didn’t want to refer to them as “extraterrestrials” just yet.

The apparently desiccated bodies date back to 2017 and were found deep underground in the sandy Peruvian coastal desert of Nazca. The area is known for gigantic enigmatic figures scraped into the earth and seen only from a birds-eye-view. Most attribute the Nazca Lines to ancient indigenous communities, but the formations have captured the imaginations of many.

In 2017, Maussan made similar claims in Peru, and a report by the country’s prosecutor’s office found that the bodies were actually “recently manufactured dolls, which have been covered with a mixture of paper and synthetic glue to simulate the presence of skin.”

The report added that the figures were almost certainly human-made and that “they are not the remains of ancestral aliens that they have tried to present”. The bodies were not publicly unveiled at the time, so it is unclear if they are the same as those presented to Mexico’s congress.

On Wednesday, Julieta Fierro, researcher at the Institute of Astronomy at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, was among those to express skepticism, saying that many details about the figures “made no sense.”

Fierro added that the researchers’ claims that her university endorsed their supposed discovery were false, and noted that scientists would need more advanced technology than the X-rays they claimed to use to determine if the allegedly calcified bodies were “non-human”.

“Maussan has done many things. He says he has talked to the Virgin of Guadalupe,” she said. “He told me extraterrestrials do not talk to me like they talk to him because I don’t believe in them.”

The scientist added that it seemed strange that they extracted what would surely be a “treasure of the nation” from Peru without inviting the Peruvian ambassador.

Congressman Sergio Gutiérrez Luna of the ruling Morena party, made it clear that Congress has not taken a position on the theses put forward during the more than three-hour session.

Believing or not was up to each member of the legislative body, but those who testified had to swear an oath to tell the truth.

Gutiérrez Luna stressed the importance of listening to “all voices, all opinions” and said it was positive that there was a transparent dialogue on the issue of extraterrestrials.

In the U.S. in July, retired Maj. David Grusch alleged that the U.S. is concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reverse engineers unidentified flying objects. The Pentagon has denied his claims.

Grusch’s highly anticipated testimony before a House Oversight subcommittee was the U.S. Congress’ latest foray into the world of UAPs — or “unidentified aerial phenomena,” which is the official term the U.S. government uses instead of UFOs.

Democrats and Republicans in recent years have pushed for more research as a national security matter due to concerns that sightings observed by pilots may be tied to U.S. adversaries.

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SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — As Elizabeth Holmes prepares to report to prison next week, the criminal case that laid bare the blood-testing scam at the heart of her Theranos startup is entering its final phase.

The 11-year sentence represents a comeuppance for the wide-eyed woman who broke through “tech bro” culture to become one of Silicon Valley’s most celebrated entrepreneurs, only to be exposed as a fraud. Along the way, Holmes became a symbol of the shameless hyperbole that often saturates startup culture.

But questions still linger about her true intentions — so many that even the federal judge who presided over her trial seemed mystified. And Holmes’ defenders continue to ask whether the punishment fits the crime.

At 39, she seems most likely to be remembered as Silicon Valley’s Icarus — a high-flying entrepreneur burning with reckless ambition whose odyssey culminated in convictions for fraud and conspiracy.

Her motives are still somewhat mysterious, and some supporters say federal prosecutors targeted her unfairly in their zeal to bring down one of the most prominent practitioners of fake-it-til-you-make-it — the tech sector’s brand of self-promotion that sometimes veers into exaggeration and blatant lies to raise money.

Holmes will begin to pay the price for her deceit on May 30 when she is scheduled begin the sentence that will separate her from her two children — a son whose July 2021 birth delayed the start of her trial and a 3-month-old daughter conceived after her conviction.

She is expected to be incarcerated in Bryan, Texas, about 100 miles (160 km) northwest of her hometown of Houston. The prison was recommended by the judge who sentenced Holmes, but authorities have not publicly disclosed where she will be held.

Her many detractors contend she deserves to be in prison for peddling a technology that she repeatedly boasted would quickly scan for hundreds of diseases and other health problems with a few drops of blood taken with a finger prick.

The technology never worked as promised. Instead, Theranos tests produced wildly unreliable results that could have endangered patients’ lives — one of the most frequently cited reasons why she deserved to be prosecuted.

Before those lies were uncovered in a series of explosive articles in The Wall Street Journal beginning in October 2015, Holmes raised nearly $1 billion from a list of savvy investors including Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and media mogul Rupert Murdoch. It was the duping of those investors that led to her prison sentence and a $452 million restitution bill.

Holmes’ stake in Theranos at one point catapulted her paper wealth to $4.5 billion. She never sold any of her stock in the company, though trial evidence left no doubt she reveled in the trappings of fame and fortune — so much so that she and the father of her children, William “Billy” Evans, lived on a palatial Silicon Valley estate during the trial.

The theory that Holmes was running an elaborate scam was buttressed by trial evidence documenting her efforts to prevent the Journal’s investigation from being published. That campaign compelled John Carreyrou — the reporter responsible for those bombshell stories — to attend court and position himself in Holmes’ line of vision when she took the witness stand.

Holmes also signed off on surveillance aimed at intimidating Theranos employees who helped uncover the flaws with the blood-testing technology. The whistleblowers included Tyler Shultz, the grandson of former Secretary of State George Shultz, whom Holmes befriended and persuaded to join the Theranos board.

Tyler Shultz became so unnerved by Holmes’ efforts to shut him up that he began sleeping with a knife under his pillow, according to a wrenching statement delivered by his father, Alex, at her sentencing.

Holmes’ supporters still contend she always had good intentions and was unfairly scapegoated by the Justice Department. They insist she simply deployed the same over-the-top promotion tactics as many other tech executives, including Elon Musk, who has repeatedly made misleading statements about the capabilities of Tesla’s self-driving cars.

According to those supporters, Holmes was singled out because she was a woman who briefly eclipsed the men who customarily bask in Silicon Valley’s spotlight, and the trial turned her into a latter-day version of Hester Prynne — the protagonist in the 1850 novel “The Scarlet Letter.”

Holmes steadfastly maintained her innocence during seven often-riveting days of testimony in her own defense — a spectacle that caused people to line up shortly after midnight to secure one of the few dozen seats available in the San Jose courtroom.

On one memorable day, Holmes recounted how she had never gotten over the trauma of being raped while enrolled at Stanford University. She then described being subjected to a long-running pattern of emotional and sexual abuse by her former lover and Theranos conspirator, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, and suggested his stifling control blurred her thinking.

Balwani’s lawyer, Jeffrey Coopersmith, denied those allegations during the trial. In Balwani’s subsequent trial, Coopersmith unsuccessfully tried to depict his client as Holmes’ pawn.

Balwani, 57, is now serving a nearly 13-year prison sentence for fraud and conspiracy.

When it came time to sentence the then-pregnant Holmes in November, U.S. District Judge Edward Davila seemed as puzzled as anyone about why she did what she did.

”This is a fraud case where an exciting venture went forward with great expectations and hope, only to be dashed by untruth, misrepresentations, hubris and plain lies,” Davila lamented while Holmes stood before him. “I suppose we step back and we look at this, and we think what is the pathology of fraud?”

The judge also hearkened back to the days that Silicon Valley consisted mostly of orchards farmed by immigrants. That was before the land was ceded to the tech boom beginning in 1939 when William Hewlett and David Packard founded a company bearing their surnames in a one-car garage in Palo Alto — the same city where Theranos was based.

“You’ll recall the wonderful innovation of those two individuals in that small garage,” Davila reminded everyone in the rapt courtroom. “No exotic automobiles or lavish lifestyle, just a desire to create for society’s benefit through honest hard work. And that, I would hope, would be the continuing story, the legacy and practice of Silicon Valley.”

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Michael Liedtke has been covering Silicon Valley for The Associated Press for 23 years.

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File # SW230790029

Details:

On March 20, 2023, about 10:15 am, deputies from the Riverside Sheriff’s Southwest Station responded to a residence located in the 30700 block of San Pasqual Road, Temecula, reference Garret K. Hodson, who claimed to be a draftsman, and a second suspect, who claimed to be a City of Temecula building inspector, located at the residence. The homeowner of the residence hired 56-year-old Hodson, a resident of Temecula, to create building plans for a barn to be constructed on his property. Hodson also operates under the business name of “Group Design”. Hodson was also paid to obtain the building permits from the City of Temecula. The homeowner built the barn with the belief Hodson submitted his building plans to the City of Temecula and obtained the proper permits. The investigation revealed Hodson never submitted any plans to the city, nor did he obtain the proper building permits.

On March 20, 2023, about 3:00 pm, Hodson and his accomplice, who was impersonating a City of Temecula building inspector, arrived at the San Pasqual residence to perform the final inspection of the barn. Unbeknown to the suspects, official City of Temecula building inspectors were already at the location and confirmed the building plans Hodson was in possession of, and all related documents, were illegitimate. The second suspect who was impersonating the building inspector fled the scene prior to the deputy’s arrival. It is believed Hodson’s motive was to pocket the costs for the building permits in lieu of paying the city. Hodson was arrested without incident for Theft by False Pretenses and booked into the Cois Byrd Detention Center.

This investigation continues and we are working to identify all suspects involved. The Riverside County Sheriff’s Office believes there may be additional victims within the Temecula Valley and is seeking the public’s assistance. Anyone with information related to fraud involving Hodson is encouraged to contact Sergeant Frank Tiburzio of the Southwest Station (951) 696–3043.

A list of all building and fire permits applied for and issued by the City of Temecula since 2014 will be made available to the public at the following website, https://temeculaca.gov/1013/Development-Reports.

Building permits ensure that construction projects meet the minimum standards for safety. Homeowners and businesses can protect themselves by checking for proper professional licenses at the following links:

California Contractors State License Board

California Architects Board

Board for Professional Engineers, Land Surveyors, and Geologists

Additionally, the California State License Board has a site dedicated to supporting consumers, including tips for hiring contractors, contract and binding agreement recommendations, and other important considerations for any construction project visit cslb.ca.org to learn more.

If you reside in the unincorporated areas of Riverside County, you can contact the Riverside County Building and Safety Department for assistance at the following link: http://rctlma.org/building/

For media inquiries regarding this incident please contact the Media Information Bureau.

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