A lawyer pleaded guilty to stealing more than $20 million from a bank and at least one client, spending the loot on vacation homes, a wedding and generous salaries for his employees, authorities said.

Under a deal with prosecutors, Anthony Bellettieri, 53, faces more than a decade in prison after admitting Thursday in federal court to bank and mail fraud dating to at least 2003.

AdvertisementBellettieri, a real estate lawyer, stole the funds through check kiting – taking money from his law firm's escrow account and writing checks on another account to cover the escrow account's losses.
According to J.P. Morgan Chase, the primary victim, the tactic worked partly because he used checks with a printed error. The scheme fell apart after the bank issued correct checks in November.

Authorities said Bellettieri also convinced a client to invest almost $2 million in phony private mortgages.

Defense lawyer Murray Richman told The Journal News, “It's a terrible thing to see a man destroyed and humbled by his own actions and lose control of his life.”

Prosecutor Cynthia Keefe Dunne said the stolen money paid for, among other things, a swimming pool at Bellettieri's Pleasantville home, a family wedding, high salaries for the law firm's workers and condos in Miami Beach and Aruba.

Bellettieri was released on $500,000 bond. Sentencing is May 18. His plea agreement requires him to pay as much as $22 million in restitution and forfeit properties he purchased.

WASHINGTON – A federal grand jury in the District of the Virgin Islands returned an indictment charging a St. Thomas man with five counts of child pornography, Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Anthony J. Jenkins for the District of the Virgin Islands announced today.

Bradley Douglas Highbarger is charged with two counts of receiving child pornography, two counts of possessing child pornography, and one count of attempting to distribute child pornography. If convicted on all of the charges, the defendant faces a mandatory minimum sentence of five years and a maximum sentence of 20 years with a $250,000 fine and the possibility of lifetime supervised release.

On July 20, 2006, investigators initially executed two search warrants on Highbarger’s residence and computer to investigate suspected crimes involving passport fraud and controlled substances. During the review of the computer evidence, investigators also uncovered still pictures and video depicting child pornography. In or about July 2006, the defendant used peer-to-peer file sharing software to download and then possess child pornography. The defendant also configured the software to allow further distribution of the child pornography to any and all users of the peer-to-peer software program around the world.

The defendant was arrested and detained on the drug and passport fraud offenses on July 20, 2006, and has since been detained in federal custody.

The case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorney Kayla Bakshi of the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney St. Clair Theodore of the U.S. Attorney’s office for the District of the Virgin Islands. This case is being investigated by multiple law enforcement agencies including the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, Diplomatic Security Service of the U.S. Department of State, and the Postal Inspection Service.

The charges contained in this indictment are allegations only and the defendant is presumed innocent until convicted at trial.

This case is being brought as part of Project Safe Childhood. In February 2006, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales created Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative designed to protect children from online exploitation and abuse. Led by the U.S. Attorneys Offices, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov/.

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Continually in the tabloids, actress and model Anna Nicole Smith continues to make headlines after her death, as her legal disputes remain undecided and U.S. authorities probe the cause of her sudden death.

Authorities said she was rushed to hospital on Thursday afternoon after a private nurse found her unconscious and unresponsive at the Seminole Hard Rock Cafe Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Fla. Smith, the 39-year-old former Playboy model, died Thursday.

Deputy Police Chief Michael Browne said Friday that officials have interviewed everyone connected to the death and no one was under suspicion."Nothing about this death seems suspicious. We're not treating it that way," Browne said. "We're being very thorough. We're going to look at everything."

The medical examiner's office also said it began conducting an autopsy on Friday morning. Dr. Joshua Perper, who was scheduled to perform the autopsy, had said Thursday that if Smith died of natural causes, the findings would likely be released quickly. However, definitive results could take weeks, he added.

Legal Issues

Smith had been embroiled in several legal disputes prior to her death, including a paternity suit over her five-month-old daughter.

Attorney Howard K. Stern, Smith's most recent partner, is listed as the baby's father on the birth certificate. However, her former boyfriend Larry Birkhead has claimed to be the infant's biological father.

An emergency court hearing into the paternity suit was scheduled for Friday in Los Angeles.

Just last week, Smith had been included in a class-action lawsuit against TrimSpa, which produces a weight-loss pill for which she served as spokesperson. The suit alleges the marketing of the weight-loss supplement was false and misleading.

Most prominently, however, Smith — a former Playboy covergirl, playmate of the year and Guess model — was involved in a decade-long battle over the fortune of her former husband, J. Howard Marshall.

The Houston-born Smith, a former topless dancer, was notorious for her relationship with the 89-year-old oil tycoon after meeting him at a Texas strip club. They had been married for 14 months when he died in 1995.

A federal court in California initially awarded Smith $474 million US, but the decision was later overturned. However, in May 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that she could continue her fight for the Marshall fortune.

PETALUMA, Calif., Feb. 7, 2007 -- Primetime news program Lou Dobbs Tonight dropped an investigative story exposing the diversion of billions of dollars in federal small-business set-aside contracts to some of the nation's largest corporations and defense contractors just hours before the segment was to air on CNN.

As part of Dobb's series, "The Attack on the Middle Class,"
the show's producers spent several weeks researching and filming the segment featuring Lloyd Chapman, contracting expert and president of the American Small Business League. During his interview with CNN, Chapman discussed a series of 13 federal investigations by the Government Accountability Office, Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy and the SBA Office of Inspector General that found billions of dollars in federal small business contracts were diverted to Fortune 500 corporations. The Bush Administration reported these contracts - awarded to firms like L3-Communications, General Dynamics, Halliburton and major CNN advertisers Boeing and Lockheed - as "small business" awards.

CNN producers told Chapman that the segment had been pulled
in the wake of more pressing news stories but assured him
that it would air shortly. After three months of waiting, Chapman has concluded that the station abruptly pulled the story to avoid embarrassing its major advertisers and has no intention of ever airing the segment.

"CNN is never going to run that story," said Chapman. "I think they pulled it because it was unflattering to its major advertisers, Lockheed Martin and Boeing. CNN's
reputation as the most trusted name in news obviously doesn't apply when you're talking about its advertisers."

Chapman points to a story featured on the highly rated blog
The Daily Kos, "Advertising as Payola: Who really owns CNN," that also suggests firms like Lockheed and Boeing, who have no products to sell to the general public, advertise on major networks to gain influence over the media outlet.

The latest government figures report Boeing with 37 federal small business awards, totaling $495,319,668. Lockheed Martin received $223,210,917 in federal small business awards and Fortune 500 defense contractor L-3 Communications was the top recipient of small business contracts with $650,143,831. The ASBL projects that up to $65 billion a year in federal small business contracts are diverted to the top two percent of firms in the US.

For more information about the American Small Business
League, see http://www.asbl.com.