Chicago Man Pleads Guilty to Meth Trafficking, Faces 15 Years in Prison

Department of Justice
U.S. Attorney’s Office
Western District of Missouri

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

‘I Should Have Stayed in the Bushes’ He Tells Officers

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – A Chicago, Illinois, man who was arrested while driving through northern Missouri pleaded guilty in federal court today to possessing nearly a kilogram of methamphetamine to distribute.

Kevin M. Phyfiher, 29, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Greg Kays to one count of possessing methamphetamine with the intent to distribute.

A Missouri State Highway Patrol trooper stopped the Dodge Caravan Phyfiher was driving on Interstate 29 in Andrew County, Missouri, on May 8, 2017. In addition to Phyfiher, co-defendant Donta Mosley, 27, of Chicago, was in the cargo area of the van, and there were two female passengers. Phyfiher was not identified as a lawful driver of the vehicle, which had been rented by his cousin (who was not present).

Officers directed Phyfiher and the passengers to get out of the van while they deployed a police support canine. Mosley, who had a handgun in his waistband, was arrested. The others were instructed to get on the ground during the search. Phyfiher then fled, running into the underbrush, and law enforcement officers were unable to find him. During a later search of the vehicle, officers found two plastic baggies that contained a total of 907 grams of methamphetamine.

The next day, a vehicle was reported as stolen from Jesse’s Last Stop Gas Station in Andrew County. At about 6:19 a.m., a state trooper saw Phyfiher driving the stolen vehicle on 36 Highway. The trooper attempted to stop the vehicle and the vehicle attempted to evade the officer. After several miles of pursuit at high rates of speed, the stolen vehicle was stopped by spike strips that were deployed in the road by other law enforcement officers. Phyfiher, who surrendered and was arrested, told officers, “I should have stayed in the bushes.”

According to today’s plea agreement, investigators discovered several live stream video recordings taken by Phyfiher in the days before his arrest. The videos show Phyfiher on a road trip to Las Vegas and California. In one of the videos, Phyfiher and Mosley are holding large stacks of money. In another video, Phyfiher refers to getting some “Cali dope.”

Mosley was sentenced on Jan. 30, 2019, to five years and four months in federal prison without parole after pleading guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Under the terms of today’s plea agreement, Phyfiher is subject to a sentence of 15 years in federal prison without parole. A sentencing hearing will be scheduled after the completion of a presentence investigation by the United States Probation Office.

This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Trey Alford. It was investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Missouri State Highway Patrol.

Overwhelming Fan and Industry Response for Craig Morgan’s Self-Released, Faith-Filled Tribute to Son, Jerry

For Immediate Release

Overwhelming Fan and Industry Response for Craig Morgan’s Self-Released, Faith-Filled Tribute to Son, Jerry

Nearly 300k combined streams and video views for “powerful, inspirational” song in first 72 hours of release

Nashville, TN — September 4, 2019 — Craig Morgan’s faith-filled tribute to his son Jerry — “The Father, My Son, And The Holy Ghost” — released Friday (8/30) to an overwhelming response. Fans immediately took to social media to share their own personal journeys with loss and the hope the song inspires:
“Oh wow ? brought tears to my eyes. Such a beautiful song. We also lost our son Derek, age 20, almost three years ago. This speaks to my heart, the Lord and knowing we will see our son in Heaven is the only way we have been able to keep going. I also have sweet memories of my son singing Almost Home at the top of his lungs as a little boy. Thank you for what you do.”
– Melody Kennedy on Facebook

“ I don’t know if you will ever see this but thank you so much for this song I am 69 years old we just lost our son on 8-2-19 six days before his 38th Birthday he was my son and friend I miss him so much and this song helps heal my heart thank you again my heart bleeds for you and your family no parent should have to feel this pain but your song reminds us we will be together again.”
– Tom West on Facebook

“Beautiful song to honor your son! We lost our daughter the same month you lost your son. That song brought me to tears and made me feel it deep in my soul! I truly needed that tonight! God Bless you and your family!”
– Faith Kirkpatrick on Facebook
His first new music in over three years, the self-released song shares Craig’s own personal grief and ever-present faith. “The Father, My Son, And The Holy Ghost” audio and video was streamed nearly 300,000 times in 72 hours as media from coast-to-coast reacted to the song:
“As country fans know, Craig Morgan can deliver a ballad — and the vocal power here is impressive — but what makes this song shine is the lyric. If ever there was a song that will force you to the side of the road and compose yourself, this is it.” – CMT

“Craig Morgan holds nothing back during ‘The Father, My Son, And The Holy Ghost’…cathartic to the very last note…a tremendously powerful song that twists like a knife in the collective guts of the country music fan.” – Taste of Country

“…his constant and compass has always been a big emphasis on faith and family. ‘The Father, My Son, and the Holy Ghost’ is hard to not feel the power of, as the words run like palpable finger ends tracing the crevices of the spine, even if faith is something the listener finds elusive.” – Saving Country Music

“Keep the tissues nearby for Craig Morgan’s powerful song ‘The Father, My Son, And The Holy Ghost.’” – Billboard

“Craig Morgan gets real about grief…a heart-wrenching, incredibly personal ballad in which Morgan discusses the realities of trying to live life without a loved one.” – The Boot

“Grab a tissue (or two) before listening to this powerful new song by Craig Morgan.” – Pop Culture

“Powerful…inspirational…the listener is brought along on this ride with Morgan filled with anguish and sadness as he closes out the track…in his delivery, you feel the agony as well as the confidence and conviction that he knows his son is no longer with him on Earth but that he is not gone.” – NY Country Swag

“Powerful tribute…Craig has channeled that incredible grief into his first new music since that unimaginable loss. ‘The Father, My Son, and the Holy Ghost’ is an intensely personal song that addresses how those left behind find a way to create a new reality without their loved one. And while the song is about Craig’s unique situation, it’s relevant to anyone who has experienced the ultimate loss.” – OneCountry
Listen to “The Father, My Son, And The Holy Ghost” on numerous playlists including Apple Music’s Breaking Country, Pandora’s New Country Now, Spotify’s New Traditions: Country Heroes and YouTube’s Country’s New Crop plus Billboard’s “First Country” selections and Rolling Stone Country’s “10 Best Country Songs To Hear Now.” Fans can also watch an emotional performance from Craig during a recent appearance at the Grand Ole Opry where he received a standing ovation in response to the song.
About Craig Morgan: A multi-faceted entertainer, Craig Morgan has made a name for himself as a country music icon, TV personality, celebrated outdoorsman and patriotic Army veteran. One of country music’s best-loved artists, Morgan has charted 25 songs on Billboard and thrills massive crowds with signature hits including “Bonfire,” Almost Home,” “Redneck Yacht Club,” “International Harvester,” “This Ole Boy,” “Wake Up Loving You” and the four week #1, “That’s What I Love About Sunday.”

Craig received one of country music’s highest honors when he was inducted as a member of the Grand Ole Opry in 2008. Prior to becoming a country music star and TV sensation, Morgan spent seventeen years serving our country in the Army and Army Reserves. Morgan remains an avid supporter of America’s military personnel and has made 16 overseas trips to perform for our troops. He is a recipient of the 2006 USO Merit Award and in 2018 was awarded the Army’s Outstanding Civilian Service Medal, one of the highest awards the Department of the Army can bestow upon a civilian, in recognition of his significant dedication to our military men and women around the world.

In 2017 Craig debuted The Gallery at Morgan Farms, a family-owned and operated farm-to-home business in his hometown of Dickson, TN. The store features a variety of artisan items handmade by Craig and his family.

# # #
Media Contacts for Craig Morgan:
Cindy Hunt / Heather Conley
Monarch Publicity
615-429-2203 / 615-202-5070
cindy.hunt@monarchpublicity.com / heather.conley@monarchpublicity.com

Apple to Acquire Majority of Intel’s Smartphone Modem Business Intel Sharpens Focus on Network Transformation and Compute at the Edge

News Release

July 25, 2019

Apple to Acquire Majority of Intel’s Smartphone Modem Business

Intel Sharpens Focus on Network Transformation and Compute at the Edge

SANTA CLARA and CUPERTINO, Calif., July 25, 2019 – Intel and Apple have signed an agreement for Apple to acquire the majority of Intel’s smartphone modem business. Approximately 2,200 Intel employees will join Apple, along with intellectual property, equipment and leases. The transaction, valued at $1 billion, is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2019, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary conditions, including works council and other relevant consultations in certain jurisdictions.

Combining the acquired patents for current and future wireless technology with Apple’s existing portfolio, Apple will hold over 17,000 wireless technology patents, ranging from protocols for cellular standards to modem architecture and modem operation. Intel will retain the option to develop modems for non-smartphone applications, such as PCs, internet of things devices and autonomous vehicles.

“This agreement enables us to focus on developing technology for the 5G network while retaining critical intellectual property and modem technology that our team has created,” said Intel CEO Bob Swan. “We have long respected Apple and we’re confident they provide the right environment for this talented team and these important assets moving forward. We’re looking forward to putting our full effort into 5G where it most closely aligns with the needs of our global customer base, including network operators, telecommunications equipment manufacturers and cloud service providers.”

“We’ve worked with Intel for many years and know this team shares Apple’s passion for designing technologies that deliver the world’s best experiences for our users,” said Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies. “Apple is excited to have so many excellent engineers join our growing cellular technologies group, and know they’ll thrive in Apple’s creative and dynamic environment. They, together with our significant acquisition of innovative IP, will help expedite our development on future products and allow Apple to further differentiate moving forward.”

Advisors
Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC served as financial advisor to Intel, and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Sullivan & Cromwell LLP served as legal advisors.

About Intel
Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), a leader in the semiconductor industry, is shaping the data-centric future with computing and communications technology that is the foundation of the world’s innovations. The company’s engineering expertise is helping address the world’s greatest challenges as well as helping secure, power and connect billions of devices and the infrastructure of the smart, connected world – from the cloud to the network to the edge and everything in between. Find more information about Intel at newsroom.intel.com and intel.com.

About Apple
Apple revolutionized personal technology with the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984. Today, Apple leads the world in innovation with iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV. Apple’s four software platforms — iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS — provide seamless experiences across all Apple devices and empower people with breakthrough services including the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay and iCloud. Apple’s more than 100,000 employees are dedicated to making the best products on earth, and to leaving the world better than we found it.

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements relating to the pending sale of the majority of Intel’s smartphone modem business to Apple, including statements regarding the benefits and the timing of the transaction, as well as forward-looking statements relating to Intel’s future plans and expectations, total addressable market and market opportunity, future products and technology and the expected benefits of such products and technology, and anticipated trends in Intel’s businesses and the markets relevant to them. Words such as “anticipates,” “expects,” “intends,” “goals,” “plans,” “believes,” “seeks,” “estimates,” “continues,” “may,” “will,” “would,” “should,” “could,” and variations of such words and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements included in this release are based on management expectations as of the date of this release and, except as required by law, Intel and Apple disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances. Forward-looking statements involve many risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. Such risks and uncertainties include the outcome of regulatory reviews of the transaction, the outcome of works council consultations and other relevant consultations in certain jurisdictions related to the transaction, the ability of the parties to complete the transaction in the time expected or at all, litigation or regulatory matters affecting the closing of the transaction, and other risks detailed in Intel’s and Apple’s SEC filings, including the companies’ most recent reports on Form 10-K, Form 10-Q, and Form 8-K, which are available at the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. Copies of Intel’s SEC filings may also be obtained by visiting Intel’s Investor Relations website at www.intc.com, and copies of Apple’s SEC filings may be obtained by visiting Apple’s Investor Relations website at investor.apple.com.

World Bank Mobilizes US$300 Million to Finance the Ebola Response in Democratic Republic of Congo

PRESS RELEASEJuly 24, 2019

World Bank Mobilizes US$300 Million to Finance the Ebola Response in Democratic Republic of Congo

WASHINGTON, July 24, 2019—The World Bank Group today announced that it is mobilizing up to US$300 million to scale up support for the global response to the Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The announcement follows the declaration by the World Health Organization (WHO) that the current outbreak constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.

“Together, we must take urgent action to stop the deadly Ebola epidemic that is destroying lives and livelihoods in the Democratic Republic of Congo”, said World Bank Chief Executive Officer Kristalina Georgieva. “The communities and health workers on the front line of this outbreak urgently need more support and resources from the international community to prevent this crisis from worsening inside the country and from spreading across borders.”

The US$300 million in grants and credits will be largely financed through the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) and its Crisis Response Window, which is designed to help countries respond to severe crises and return to their long-term development paths. The financing package will cover the Ebola-affected health zones in DRC and enable the government, WHO, UNICEF, WFP, IOM and other responders to step up the frontline health response, deliver cash-for-work programs to support the local economy, strengthen resilience in the affected communities, and contain the spread of this deadly virus.

This amount is approximately half of the anticipated financing needs of the Fourth Strategic Response Plan (SRP4), which is expected to be finalized in the coming week by the Government and the international consortium of partners working on the response. The World Bank has been supporting programs to combat DRC’s ongoing battle with Ebola since May 2018, with resources going to the frontline response, health system strengthening, and preparedness to reduce the risk of spread.

The US $300 million in World Bank financing announced today comes in addition to the US$100 million disbursed by the World Bank and the Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility (PEF) in response to the current Ebola Outbreak in DRC since August 2018. Details on the Bank’s total financing for the DRC Ebola response to date are available here.

Ebola has spread across communities already beset by the severe hardships of extreme poverty and insecurity. The World Bank’s engagement in DRC is focused on investing in people, supporting communities, strengthening services and systems, which are all critical steps to stamping out this crisis—and to tackle the underlying sources of poverty and inequity that have helped fuel this deadly outbreak.

PRESS RELEASE NO: 2020/018/HD

Contacts

In Washington

Sheryl Silverman

+1 (202) 473-3297

ssilverman@worldbankgroup.org

For Broadcast Requests

Huma Imtiaz

+1 (202) 473-2409

himtiaz@worldbankgroup.org

USCIRF Vice Chair Nadine Maenza Calls for Release of Iranian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 25, 2019

USCIRF Vice Chair Nadine Maenza Calls for Release of Iranian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani

WASHINGTON, DC – Nadine Maenza, Vice Chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), today called on Iranian authorities to drop all charges against and to release Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani. One year ago this week, plainclothes Iranian security forces invaded Pastor Nadarkhani’s home, reportedly tasered his son, and took Pastor Nadarkhani to fulfill a ten-year prison sentence for evangelizing and promoting “Zionist Christianity.”

“Iran must release Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani and ensure freedom of religion for all citizens of Iran,” said Vice Chair Maenza, who adopted Pastor Nadarkhani as part of USCIRF’s Religious Prisoners of Conscience Project in 2018. “The Iranian government has vilified and deprived the basic rights of Pastor Nadarkhani and of many other Iranians simply for exercising their freedom of belief. This must stop. I call on the government of Iran to live up to its commitments to its citizens under international law.”

Since 2006, Iranian authorities have consistently harassed and detained Pastor Nadarkhani and his family. In 2010, the authorities sentenced him to death for apostasy before acquitting him in 2012. His current prison sentence stems from his arrest on May 13, 2016, when authorities detained him and his wife before releasing them later that day. On July 6, 2017, Pastor Nadarkhani was ultimately sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.

###

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is an independent, bipartisan federal government entity established by the U.S. Congress to monitor, analyze and report on threats to religious freedom abroad. USCIRF makes foreign policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State and Congress intended to deter religious persecution and promote freedom of religion and belief. To interview a Commissioner, please contact USCIRF at Media@USCIRF.gov or Kellie Boyle at kboyle@uscirf.gov or +1-703-898-6554

Bronx Man Arrested for Attempting to Provide Material Support for Terrorism Delowar Mohammed Hossain was Arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport While Allegedly Attempting to Travel Overseas to Join the Taliban in Order to Kill Americans

Department of Justice

Office of Public Affairs

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Friday, July 26, 2019

Bronx Man Arrested for Attempting to Provide Material Support for Terrorism

Delowar Mohammed Hossain was Arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport While Allegedly Attempting to Travel Overseas to Join the Taliban in Order to Kill Americans

John C. Demers, Assistant Attorney General for National Security, Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Michael McGarrity, Assistant Director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, William F. Sweeney Jr., the Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Field Office of the FBI, and James P. O’Neill, the Commissioner of the Police Department for the City of New York (NYPD), announced that Delowar Mohammed Hossain was arrested today at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK Airport) in Queens, New York. Hossain was charged in a criminal Complaint today with attempting to provide material support for acts of terrorism, specifically in support of killing U.S. nationals located overseas. Hossain was presented today before Magistrate Judge Stewart D. Aaron in Manhattan federal court.

“As alleged, Hossain planned to travel overseas and join the Taliban in order to kill American soldiers,” said Assistant Attorney General Demers. “The threat of terrorism at home and abroad remains, and the National Security Division is committed to preventing individuals from carrying out deadly plans such as this. I want to thank the agents, analysts, and prosecutors who are responsible for this case.”

“As alleged, Delowar Hossain plotted to travel to Afghanistan to join the Taliban, specifically so he could commit acts of terrorism,” said U.S. Attorney Berman. “Hossain wanted to kill Americans, and particularly wanted to target members of our armed forces, serving our nation overseas. The excellent work of the FBI and NYPD stopped Hossain’s alleged deadly plan to join the Taliban before he took flight, and he now faces federal terrorism charges.”

“The criminal complaint in this case reveals Delowar Hossain had a despicable goal. He wanted to make his way to Afghanistan, join up with Taliban forces, and kill Americans,” said Assistant Director McGarrity. “But he failed because members of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force interrupted his plans. The FBI is committed to working with our law enforcement partners to stop those who want to commit acts of terrorism here in the U.S. or overseas.”

“The lure of radical ideologies comes from many sources, and just because the Taliban may seem like an old and out of vogue extremist group, it shouldn’t be underestimated,” said Director-in-Charge Sweeney Jr. “The FBI New York Joint Terrorism Task Force stopped Mr. Hossain from traveling overseas to allegedly support a deadly organization, and kept him from his alleged plan to kill innocent people.”

“As we continue to see time and again, attempting to support terrorist attacks will lead to arrest,” said NYPD Commissioner O’Neil. “I commend the dedication of the NYPD detectives and FBI agents who, through the Joint Terrorism Task Force, remain relentless in their focus to keep New York City and our nation safe.”

As alleged in the criminal Complaint filed today in Manhattan federal court, beginning in the fall of 2018, Hossain expressed his desire to join the Taliban and fight against American forces. Over the months that followed, Hossain attempted to recruit a confidential source of the FBI (CS-1) to travel with Hossain from the United States to Pakistan, and then to cross the border into Afghanistan to join the Taliban. Hossain told CS-1 that his purpose was to “fight the American government from there . . . combined with the Taliban,” and that “I want to kill some kufars [non-believers] before I die.” Hossain described to CS-1 steps he had taken to prevent detection of his plan, such as planning to reach Pakistan by first flying to Thailand, which Hossain believed would conceal his ultimate goal of joining the Taliban. At the same time, Hossain made preparations to fight in Afghanistan, including buying equipment such as walkie-talkies and trekking gear and instructing CS-1 to save money “to buy weapons” after reaching Afghanistan.

Hossain purchased an airline ticket for a flight scheduled to depart on July 26, 2019, from JFK Airport, to Thailand, for the first leg of the route to Afghanistan that Hossain had described to CS-1. On July 26, Hossain traveled to JFK Airport, where the FBI arrested him after he attempted to board that flight.

Hossain, 33, of the Bronx, is charged with one count of attempting to provide material support for terrorism, which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. The maximum potential sentence in this case is prescribed by Congress and is provided here for informational purposes only, as any sentencing of the defendant will be determined by a judge.

Assistant Attorney General John Demers and U.S. Attorney Berman praised the outstanding efforts of the FBI’s New York Joint Terrorism Task Force, which consists principally of agents from the FBI and detectives from the NYPD.

This prosecution is being handled by the Office’s Terrorism and International Narcotics Unit. Assistant U.S. Attorneys David W. Denton, Jr. and Michael K. Krouse are in charge of the prosecution, with assistance from Trial Attorney Jennifer Burke of the Counterterrorism Section.

The charges contained in the Complaint are merely accusations, and the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

Topic(s):

National Security

Component(s):

National Security Division (NSD)

USAO – New York, Southern

Press Release Number:

19-814

Updated July 26, 2019

U.S. Attorney’s Office Continues to Promote Elder Justice Initiative by Partnering with Meals on Wheels

Department of Justice

U.S. Attorney’s Office

Eastern District of North Carolina

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Monday, July 29, 2019

U.S. Attorney’s Office Continues to Promote Elder Justice Initiative by Partnering with Meals on Wheels

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina continues to promote the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Elder Justice Initiative (EJI) throughout the Wake County area. On July 22, 2019, the Eastern District partnered with Meals on Wheels in Wake County to conduct Phase II of its outreach to approximately 1,300 seniors in the area to raise awareness about DOJ’s Elder Justice Initiative and provide facts about financial exploitation and how seniors can protect themselves from falling victim.

Below are some facts shared with the community about financial exploitation:

Examples of financial exploitation include:
- Using ATM cards without permission
- Forging a signature on a check or property title (wills, deeds)
- Using a power of attorney to benefit oneself rather than the older adult
- Unauthorized sales, such as a family ring or the family farm
- Threats to harm precious property if money is not handed over
How to protect yourself from financial exploitation
- Check your financial statements each month
- Store financial materials in a locked drawer or out of sight
- Talk to your bank about age-friendly banking options
- Contact a civil legal attorney before signing documents
- Visit ftc.gov every year to get your free credit reports

The mission of the Elder Justice Initiative is to support and coordinate DOJ’s enforcement and programmatic efforts to prevent and combat elder abuse, neglect, financial exploitation and scams that target our nation’s seniors by promoting justice for older adults; helping older victims and their families; enhancing state and local efforts through training and resources; and supporting research to improve elder abuse policy and practice.

For more information about DOJ’s efforts to prevent and combat elder abuse, please visit the Elder Justice Website at https://www.justice.gov/elderjustice. Elder fraud complaints may be filed with the FTC at www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov or at 877-FTC-HELP. You can also contact the Victim Connect Hotline between 9am-6pm, Monday through Friday, at: 1- 855-4VICTIM (1-855-4842846), or contact the Elder Justice Coordinator at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina at (919) 856-4530.

Topic(s):

Elder Justice

Component(s):

USAO – North Carolina, Eastern

Updated July 29, 2019

Justice Department Settles with T-Mobile and Sprint in Their Proposed Merger by Requiring a Package of Divestitures to Dish

Department of Justice

Office of Public Affairs

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Friday, July 26, 2019

Justice Department Settles with T-Mobile and Sprint in Their Proposed Merger by Requiring a Package of Divestitures to Dish

Divestiture Will Enable DISH’s Entry as a Fourth Nationwide Facilities-Based Wireless Competitor and Expedite Deployment of High-Quality 5G for American Consumers

The Department of Justice announced today that it and the Attorneys General for five states reached a settlement with T-Mobile and Sprint regarding their proposed merger. The settlement requires a substantial divestiture package in order to enable a viable facilities-based competitor to enter the market. Further, the settlement will facilitate the expeditious deployment of multiple high-quality 5G networks for the benefit of American consumers and entrepreneurs.

The Department’s Antitrust Division, along with the offices of five state Attorneys General (Plaintiff States), filed a civil antitrust lawsuit today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to block the proposed transaction. At the same time, the Department and the Plaintiff States filed a proposed settlement that, if approved by the court, would resolve the Department’s and the Plaintiff States’ competitive concerns. The participating state Attorneys General offices represent Nebraska, Kansas, Ohio, Oklahoma, and South Dakota.

Under the terms of the proposed settlement, T-Mobile and Sprint must divest Sprint’s prepaid business, including Boost Mobile, Virgin Mobile, and Sprint prepaid, to Dish Network Corp., a Colorado-based satellite television provider. The proposed settlement also provides for the divestiture of certain spectrum assets to Dish. Additionally, T-Mobile and Sprint must make available to Dish at least 20,000 cell sites and hundreds of retail locations. T-Mobile must also provide Dish with robust access to the T-Mobile network for a period of seven years while Dish builds out its own 5G network.

“With this merger and accompanying divestiture, we are expanding output significantly by ensuring that large amounts of currently unused or underused spectrum are made available to American consumers in the form of high quality 5G networks,” said Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. “Today’s settlement will provide Dish with the assets and transitional services required to become a facilities-based mobile network operator that can provide a full range of mobile wireless services nationwide. I want to thank our state partners for joining us in this settlement.” Delrahim added, “In crafting this remedy, we are also mindful of the significant commitments T-Mobile, Sprint, and Dish have made to the Federal Communications Commission.”

The Department and the Plaintiff States said that, without the divestiture, the proposed acquisition would eliminate competition between two of only four facilities-based suppliers of nationwide mobile wireless services. According to the complaint, T-Mobile and Sprint both operate mobile networks and offer nationwide coverage to consumers, and they are particularly close competitors to each other for the roughly 30% of retail subscribers who purchase prepaid mobile wireless service. The combination of T-Mobile and Sprint would eliminate head-to-head competition between the companies and threaten the benefits that customers have realized from that competition in the form of lower prices and better service.

T-Mobile US Inc. is a Delaware corporation headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. In 2018, T-Mobile posted revenues of more than $43 billion. Deutsche Telekom AG, a German corporation headquartered in Bonn, Germany, is the controlling shareholder of T-Mobile US Inc.

Sprint Corporation is a Delaware corporation headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas. In 2018, its posted revenue was over $32 billion. Sprint is controlled by SoftBank Group Corp., a Japanese Corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.

As required by the Tunney Act, the proposed consent decree, along with the Department’s competitive impact statement, will be published in the Federal Register. Any person may submit written comments concerning the proposed settlement within 60 days of its publication to Scott Scheele, Chief, Telecommunications and Broadband Section, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice, 450 Fifth Street, N.W., Suite 7000, Washington, D.C. 20530. At the conclusion of the 60-day comment period, the court may enter the final judgment upon a finding that it serves the public interest.

Attachment(s):

Download Complaint

Download Proposed Final Judgment

Download Stipulation and Order

Download Explanation of Tunney Act Procedures

Topic(s):

Antitrust

Component(s):

Antitrust Division

Press Release Number:

19-812

Updated July 26, 2019

Press Release: Detroit Man Sentenced To 20 Years In Prison For Selling Drugs In A Detroit Park

Department of Justice

U.S. Attorney’s Office

Eastern District of Michigan

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Monday, July 29, 2019

Detroit Man Sentenced To 20 Years In Prison For Selling Drugs In A Detroit Park

Danny Lee Woods, 46, of Detroit, Michigan, was sentenced on July 23, 2019, to a total of 20 years in federal prison by U.S. District Judge George Caram Steeh, III, for possession with intent to distribute controlled substances and possessing a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, announced United States Attorney Matthew Schneider. Woods pleaded guilty on February 27, 2019.

Schneider was joined in the announcement by James M. Deir, Special Agent in Charge of the Detroit Field Office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), and Detroit Police Department Chief James Craig.

According to court records, Woods, who was on parole at the time, was selling crack cocaine and heroin that was mixed with fentanyl at Sasser Playground, a neighborhood park located in Detroit. While making the sales, Woods had a loaded pistol in his waistband, which Woods later hid behind a tree inside the park. Woods was being surveilled by officers of the Detroit Police Department and was subsequently arrested. The case was adopted for federal prosecution.

As part of his plea, Woods agreed that he qualified as a Career Offender under the Sentencing Guidelines.

“Parks should be a place where families feel safe to gather,” said United States Attorney Matthew Schneider. “We will continue to work closely with our local police

partners to prosecute violent offenders who threaten us, so we can protect innocent children and families who just want to enjoy a nice day at the park.”

“Danny Lee Woods put innocent lives in danger when he chose to sell drugs and toss a handgun in a public park,” said Special Agent in Charge James Deir. “Instead of improving his life following previous felony convictions, Woods continued to break the law. ATF stands with our law enforcement partners to rid our community of dangerous individuals.”

“We certainly appreciate the partnership of our federal partners and commend the great work by the men and women of this department,” said Detroit Police Chief James Craig. “Our families deserve to have safe and drug free parks and we will not tolerate behavior that will compromise the well-being of our residents. We will continue our efforts in working with our federal agencies in attacking the drug epidemic that plagues our society and dampens the quality of life within our communities.”

This case was investigated by special agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and officers of the Detroit Police Department. It was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys J. Michael Buckley and Trevor Broad of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan.

Topic(s):

Drug Trafficking

Component(s):

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF)

USAO – Michigan, Eastern

Updated July 29, 2019

PRESS RELEASE: CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU RELEASES REPORT ON THIRD-PARTY DEBT COLLECTIONS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
July 18, 2019

MEDIA CONTACT:
Office of Communications
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CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU RELEASES REPORT ON THIRD-PARTY DEBT COLLECTIONS

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (Bureau) released a report today that found that more than one-in-four consumers with a credit report have at least one debt in collection by third-party debt collectors.

Today’s report, which covers 2004 to 2018, is drawn from the Bureau’s Consumer Credit Panel (CCP), a nationally representative sample of approximately 5 million de-identified credit records maintained by one of the three nationwide credit reporting companies. Close to 900 third-party debt collectors furnished collection tradelines in the CCP. A tradeline is information about a consumer account that is sent, generally on a regular basis, to a credit reporting company. Tradelines contain data such as account balance, payment history, and status of the account.

Today’s findings show that more than one-in-four consumers (28 percent) with a credit report in the CCP in 2018 had at least one third-party collections tradeline on their file. The study also found that more than three-out-of-four third-party collections tradelines are for non-financial debt. More than half (58 percent) of these tradelines are for medical debt and another 20 percent for telecommunications or utilities debt. Positive payment information is generally not furnished for medical or telecommunications debt.

Banks and other original creditors may collect their own debts or hire third-party debt collectors. In some instances, the original creditors may sell the debts to debt buyers. The buyers may try to collect on these debts, or hire other third-party debt collectors. There are approximately 9,330 debt collectors and debt buyers in the United States.

“Market Snapshot: Third-Party Debt Collections Tradeline Reporting” can be found at: https://content.consumerfinance.gov/data-research/research-reports/market-snapshot-third-party-debt-collections-tradeline-reporting/

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a 21st century agency that helps consumer finance markets work by regularly identifying and addressing outdated, unnecessary, or unduly burdensome regulations, by making rules more effective, by consistently enforcing federal consumer financial law, and by empowering consumers to take more control over their economic lives. For more information, visit consumerfinance.gov.

Michigan Defendant Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy to Defraud the IRS and Steal From an Organization Receiving Federal Funds

Department of Justice

Office of Public Affairs

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Monday, July 15, 2019

Michigan Defendant Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy to Defraud the IRS and Steal From an Organization Receiving Federal Funds

A Boca Raton, Florida, resident pleaded guilty today in Flint, Michigan, to conspiring to impede the lawful functions of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and conspiring to steal from an organization receiving federal funds, announced Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart M. Goldberg of the Justice Department’s Tax Division.

According to court documents, from January 2013 through December 2017, Scott Jawetz and his co-defendants executed a scheme, using the company Blue Horseshoe Consulting Inc. (Blue Horseshoe), to obtain police reports, stolen from the Detroit Police Department, which contained automobile crash victim information. Jawetz and his co-conspirators used the stolen information to solicit automobile accident victims for medical and chiropractic services. Jawetz and his co-conspirators also underreported to the IRS gross receipts they received from Blue Horseshoe business operations and the total wages Blue Horseshoe paid to its employees.

United States District Court Judge Matthew F. Leitman scheduled sentencing for Jawetz for Jan. 15, 2020. Jawetz faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each of the two conspiracy counts. Jawetz also faces a period of supervised release, restitution, and monetary penalties.

Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Goldberg thanked special agents of IRS-Criminal Investigation and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who conducted the investigation, and Tax Division Trial Attorneys Mark McDonald and William Guappone, who are prosecuting the case.

Additional information about the Tax Division’s enforcement efforts can be found on the division’s website.

National Indian Gaming Association Chairman Ernie Stevens, Jr., issues a statement as the House passes bill condemning President Donald Trump’s divisive comments

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 17, 2019

National Indian Gaming Association Chairman Ernie Stevens, Jr., issues a statement as the House passes bill condemning President Donald Trump’s divisive comments

Washington, D.C. – July 17, 2019 –National Indian Gaming Association Chairman Ernie Stevens, Jr., issued the following statement after the passage of House Resolution 489, regarding President Trump’s divisive comments directed at Members of Congress.

“The National Indian Gaming Association denounces the comments directed towards respected female Members of Congress. They are American citizens, duly elected by their fellow citizens, and they deserve better treatment from the Office of the President. Coming off of a historic election where the first two female Native Americans were elected to the Congress, we should be honoring the strength of this Country represented by one of the most diverse Congress’ in this Nation’s history.

The idea of America would not have been possible if it weren’t for the fact that Native Nations welcomed the first European settlers fleeing their home countries for a better life. The original sin of slavery and hatred directed at groups of immigrants stunted our growth.

For Indian Country, the violation of treaties, theft of lands, and devastating genocide against Native peoples left an indelible stain on the Nation’s honor. The xenophobic federal policies of forced assimilation authorized the government-sanctioned separation of Native children from their families where they were forbidden from speaking their language or practicing their religion.

Urging certain groups to return to their countries of origin conjures up the dark images of this Nation’s past injustices and intolerance.

Today’s United States of America is better than our past. We are a Nation of diverse and multi-racial citizens who seek the common goal of Equality and Dignity as a united people.

While our government has not always adhered to it, the foundation of the United States rests on a notion that all people are created equal with the ability to determine our own destiny. We owe it to all of our ancestors, indigenous and immigrant, to strive every day to live up to the inherent promise of our Nation’s foundation: The United States is a home for all who strive for equality regardless of color, sex, or ethnicity. May the Creator bless the United States of America and its enduring principles shared by all citizens of this great Nation.”

About the National Indian Gaming Association

The National Indian Gaming Association (NIGA), established in 1985, is a non-profit organization of 184 Indian Nations with other non-voting associate members representing organizations, tribes and businesses engaged in tribal gaming enterprises from around the country. The common commitment and purpose of NIGA is to advance the lives of Indian peoples economically, socially and politically. NIGA operates as a clearinghouse and educational, legislative and public policy resource for tribes, policymakers and the public on Indian gaming issues and tribal community development.

PRESS RELEASE: Valley Fever Prisoners Appeal to the Supreme Court

Valley Fever Prisoners Appeal to the Supreme Court

Fatal Valley Fever Fungus

Washington, DC (Law Firm Newswire) July 5, 2019 – 117 prisoners appealed to the US Supreme Court on Friday in an action challenging California’s failure to move them out of harm’s way during a 2004-2014 valley fever epidemic in Central California. The disease ravaged the population in two facilities, Pleasant Valley State Prison and Avenal State Prison. The lead defendant in the action is former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. His administration did nothing.

In cases that are not fatal, it causes a continuum of adverse health complications starting with impediments to breathing (such as choking, coughing blood and feelings of suffocation), skin lesions, erosion of bones and joints, blindness, and colonization of other organs particularly in the spine and brain. Death is usually by some form of meningitis.

During the epidemic, contraction rates spiked to 600 times the danger level experienced in the rest of the state. These risks were consistently 10-50 times higher than the surrounding geographical area, known as the “hyperendemic zone,” which was already itself 10 times more dangerous than other areas of the state.

Nevertheless, Governor Schwarzenegger’s administration did nothing, affirmatively ignoring the recommendations of its own health experts. As a result, over the course of 10 years, the disease infected thousands of people. Today, the plaintiff pool reports mass health devastation.

Half of the infected inmates have been released and are now private American citizens. These former prisoners have families and otherwise lead a reformed life. They paid their debt to society. But they are saddled for life with management, hospitalizations, medication side effects, and other complications. The state incurred a debt to them and it has not been paid.

Prisoner lawsuits began in 2007 in federal court in Fresno, California. The US Supreme Court’s 1993 decision in Helling v. McKinney, 509 U.S. 25, 33-34 clearly requires officials to protect prisoners from diseases, or upon such failure, to compensate them for the resulting medical expenses and misery. The epidemic here represents a textbook case of cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

As a result of their inaction, approximately $100 million of taxpayer money was wasted in treating valley fever cases that could have been prevented. California prison management has repeatedly been cited by the courts for its failure to run a safe and efficient operation, especially in the area of prisoner over-crowding and medical care. The medical system was placed under receivership in 2005 and remains so today.

During World War II, US authorities holding captured German soldiers in Arizona agreed to move them out of harm’s way from the risk of valley fever. At the same time, in 1940, a Stanford scientist published criteria and other safety rules to minimize the disease’s epidemic impact.

That was 80 years ago.

Yet, Schwarzenegger’s administration has successfully argued in this case that its officials did not know that valley fever presented a risk that required it to do anything. Numerous formal warnings, medical alerts, inmate protests, and expert recommendations given to officials from 2004-2007 – and standard common decency – counseled them to implement a battery of precautions, including moving at-risk prisoners out of the Central Valley prisons.

However, as a political matter, all that could be accomplished at the time was for California’s prison construction industry to not build any more beds in the hyperendemic zone. The national mass incarceration effort was still in effect.

Even in spite of direct warnings to Governor Schwarzenegger, he held a press conference in September, 2007 announcing that despite the pending and ongoing epidemic, the state would “go ahead and build.” Schwarzenegger was later quietly overruled, but nothing was done about the prisoners already in harm’s way.

In response to their subsequent lawsuits, California has insisted that without prior specific instructions relating to valley fever from the courts, and despite all the warnings, Schwarzenegger and his officials were entitled to stand idly by and watch the epidemic play out, with the most severe consequences landing on African-Americans.

Their argument is founded in a legal doctrine called “qualified immunity,” which means in practical effect total unaccountability. The plaintiffs’ case was dismissed on this basis without any discovery, without a jury, and without a trial. In any other context, epidemic danger as depicted in the photo above, in which a business, government or other institution subjects a population to dramatically-elevated health risk, would require a trial and undoubtedly result in liability.

In 2012, Cal-Trans ignored a valley fever risk for workers on a Kern County highway project. A jury returned a verdict for four of the victims in the total amount of $12M, or $3M each.

Given the magnitude of Schwarzenegger’s mistakes, the current California government structure is looking to find any loophole to avoid a jury and to avert responsibility for the quantum of harm and personal human wreckage the 2007 administration inflicted on the prison population.

According to their legal position, Schwarzenegger and his officials are entitled to qualified immunity because no court case previously informed them of exactly what to do about valley fever. Yet the Supreme Court had published Helling v McKinney in 1993, directing government officials to take reasonable measures to protect prisoners from significant diseases. The government works around Helling by claiming it was not specific enough.

This is akin to the state arguing that while it was notified as a traffic matter to avoid oncoming cars, it was not specifically warned to avoid oncoming Toyotas. Ergo, it should be held unaccountable for the head-on collision it caused with the inmates’ Camry.

It is a rocky contention at best, but one that has been validated by the Ninth Circuit to date and one that will probably not be corrected because of the Supreme Court’s impossibly busy docket. It only has the capacity to accept 1 percent of the cases presented to it.

For plaintiffs like Theodore Parker, it’s hard news to hear. Serving time in Pleasant Valley in 2010 for theft of a cell phone, he watched as other inmates became seriously ill. He pleaded with authorities to move him out. Those protests were met with pressure on him to abandon the grievance.

Soon he became infected as well, formally diagnosed in 2012 and released in June, 2014. Since then, he, his wife and his daughter have left California for a less controversial life in Portland. His youthful indiscretions are behind him, but he still lives with the disease. Last year alone, he was sick for eight months straight, coughing uncontrollably. Despite the prospect of a lifetime of complications, “the worst part of it was the psychological stress when they refused to move me.”

Despite the continuing challenges with the case, he and the other plaintiffs are resolute. Most filed their petition to the High Court on June 24, 2019 (Case No 18-1590), and if that fails, some like Parker can litigate their own round of appeals back at the 9th Circuit next year. Barring a change of heart by the Ninth Circuit, a second petition to the US Supreme Court will be filed in 2022, lasting another year or two.

If there is no luck in the American courts, the prisoners intend to press their case against Schwarzenegger and California prison officials in the United Nations, through approximately 2026. The argument there is that his administration committed acts of cruelty in violation of Article 5 of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In summary, litigation over valley fever was initiated by prisoners twelve years ago, in 2007. By the time all of the victims are completely out of options it will be roughly 2026, or 19 years later.

For American businesses, governmental authorities and other institutions, the message is this. Upon detection of a risk of valley fever, or initiation of any outdoor industry in the hyperendemic zone of California and Arizona, the maximum number of precautions, including exclusion of high-risk persons and environmental suppression, should be implemented immediately and aggressively.

If farm workers, construction personnel, truck drivers, wards, or any other subordinates under a business or institution’s care get infected, the best case scenario is a lawsuit and possibly spend two decades in court, while the worst case scenario is that a lawsuit, and after five years in court, pay $3,000,000 per victim.

Benjamin Pavone, Esq.
Attorney for the Prisoners
619 224 8885
bpavone@cox.net

Contact:

PAVONE & FONNER, LLP
501 West Broadway, Suite 800
San Diego, California, 92101
Phone: 619 224 8885
Fax: 619 224 8886
Email: bpavone@cox.net
Website: https://www.pavone-fonner-llp.com/

PRESS RELEASE: Global Music Publishing Market Research Report

The global Music Publishing Market research report studies market overview defining; definition, types, applications latest trends to identify the revenues and the progress of the market over the forecast period. The report offers preventive and premeditated management along with emphasizes the summary of the global Music Publishing market along with classifications and market chain structures. It also highlights authorized statistics of the global Music Publishing market.

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Improvement approaches and plans are examined just as assembling procedures and cost structures are additionally investigated. This report likewise states import/trade utilization, free market activity Figures, cost, value, income and gross edges. The report centers around Global real driving Music Publishing Industry players giving data, for example, organization profiles, item picture and determination, limit, generation, value, cost, income and contact data.

Based on products type, the report describes major products type share of regional market. Products mentioned as follows: Major-Type, Independent-Type, Administrator-Type

Leading vendors in the market are included based on profile, business performance etc. Vendors mentioned as follows: Sony Music Publishing LLC, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Music, Fox Music Publishing, Super Cassettes Industries Private Ltd, Kobalt Music Group, Broadcast Music, Disney Music, Avatar Publishing, MPL Communications

Based on Application, the report describes major application share of regional market. Application mentioned as follows: Commercial, Commonweal, Others

Music Publishing Market
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The research methodology of the market involves both primary as well as secondary research data sources. It commits different factors affecting Music Publishing industry such as market environment, various policies of the government, past data and market trends, technological advancements, upcoming innovations, market risk factors, market restraints, and challenges in the industry.

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With tables and figures broken down on worldwide Global Music Publishing market, this research gives key measurements on the condition of the business and is a profitable wellspring in direction and course for organizations and people intrigued by the market.

For compiling the report, data has been derived from a number of paid and unpaid sources such as presentations, white papers, journals, and press releases. It offers in-depth information obtained through extensive primary and secondary research methods. The information has been further assessed using various effective analytical tools. Therefore, the report provides a 360-degree view of market.

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At last, It includes the methodical description of the various factors such as the Music Publishing market growth and a detailed information about the different company’s revenue, growth, technological developments, production and the various other strategic developments.

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PRESS RELEASE: Type 1 diabetes and the developing brain in children

SAN FRANCISCO (June 10, 2019) – A study co-led by Dr. Nelly Mauras at Nemours Children’s Health System in Jacksonville, Florida found that children with type 1 diabetes (T1D) have slower growth in brain areas associated with mild cognitive deficits compared to children without T1D. The study, presented today at the American Diabetes Association’s® (ADA’s) 79th Scientific Sessions®, found significant differences in total brain and regional gray and white matter growth based on a series of three structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies.

“Even with new insulin and technologies that can significantly improve care, children with Type 1 Diabetes are still exposed to significant swings in sugar control, creating potential risks to the developing brain,” said Nelly Mauras, MD, co-principal investigator of the study, chief of the division of endocrinology, diabetes & metabolism at the Nemours Children’s Health System in Jacksonville, Florida, and professor of pediatrics at the Mayo College of Medicine. “Understanding the early effects of blood sugar control on brain development is a necessary step towards developing strategies for reducing these risks and the public health implications of diabetes-related cognitive dysfunction later on in life.”

As part of a multi-site study of the Diabetes Research in Children Network (DirecNet), researchers aimed to determine the extent to which glycemic exposure adversely impacts the developing brain in children with early-onset T1D. The study enrolled 138 children with T1D with a median age of seven years. The participants had a disease duration on average of 2.4 years at the beginning of the study. MRIs were performed at three time points (baseline visit, 18 months and approximately 2.9 years after the second visit) to measure gray and white matter volumes in key brain regions. Total cumulative hyperglycemic exposure was determined using lifetime blood sugar, using hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) values from the time of diagnosis. Researchers compared the MRI results of T1D participants to those of a control group of 66 age-matched children who did not have diabetes.

Researchers found that the group with T1D had slower growth of total cortical and subcortical gray and white matter than the control group at all time points. In particular, a set of metabolically active brain regions associated with other brain disorders, known as the “default mode network,” showed less growth in the T1D group compared to the control group. These regions of slower growth were associated with higher lifetime blood sugar, as measured by HbA1c values.

“Ongoing research is investigating whether diligent maintenance of blood sugar levels in the normal range through advanced diabetes technologies can impact these findings to reduce the risk for cognitive dysfunction,” said Mauras.

###

The DirecNet includes Nemours Children’s Health System JAX, Stanford University, University of Iowa, Washington University in St Louis, and Yale University. The research is supported through funding from the National Institutes of Health’s Special Type 1 Diabetes Funds and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Dr. Mauras and her co-principal investigator, Allan Reiss, MD, Howard C. Robbins Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Professor of Radiology at Stanford University School of Medicine, will present these findings in a press briefing on Sunday, June 9, 2019 from 12-1 p.m. PT at the American Diabetes Association’s 79th Scientific Sessions in San Francisco.

About Nemours Children’s Health System

Nemours is an internationally recognized children’s health system that owns and two free-standing children’s hospitals: the Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Del., and Nemours Children’s Hospital in Orlando, Fla., along with outpatient facilities in five states, delivering pediatric primary, specialty and urgent care. Nemours also powers the world’s most-visited website for information on the health of children and teens, KidsHealth.org, and offers on-demand, online video patient visits through Nemours CareConnect. Nemours ReadingBrightstart.org is a program dedicated to preventing reading failure in young children, grounded in Nemours’ understanding that child health and learning are inextricably linked, and that reading level is a strong predictor of adult health.

Established as The Nemours Foundation through the legacy and philanthropy of Alfred I. duPont, Nemours provides pediatric clinical care, research, education, advocacy and prevention programs to families in the communities it serves.

CFPB To Hold First Symposium On June 25

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
June 11, 2019

MEDIA CONTACT:
Office of Communications
Tel: (202) 435-7170

CFPB To Hold First Symposium On June 25

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced today that its first symposium will be held on June 25 at 9 a.m. The symposium, part of a series announced earlier this year, will focus on the Dodd-Frank Act’s prohibition on abusive acts or practices. The symposium will be webcast on the Bureau’s website.

The Dodd-Frank Act authorizes the Bureau to take enforcement, supervision, and rulemaking actions concerning unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts and practices (UDAAP). The meaning of abusiveness is less developed than the meaning of unfair or deceptive, which have been defined substantially by the Federal Trade Commission Act. The symposium will provide a public forum for the Bureau and the public to hear various perspectives on the meaning of abusiveness.

This first symposium will have two panels of UDAAP experts. The symposium will also include remarks by CFPB Director Kathleen L. Kraninger and CFPB Deputy Director Brian Johnson. The first panel will include a discussion with leading academic experts in the area of Consumer Protection on various policy issues relating to the abusive standard under Dodd-Frank. The panel will be moderated by Tom Pahl, CFPB’s Policy Associate Director, Research, Markets and Regulation. The experts on the panel will include:

• Patricia McCoy, Professor of Law, Boston College Law School
• Todd Zywicki, Professor of Law, George Mason University, Antonin Scalia Law School
• Howard Beales, George Washington University; former Director of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Bureau of Consumer Protection
• Adam Levitin, Professor of Law, Georgetown Law School

The second panel will examine how the abusive standard has been used in practice, and will include leading legal experts in the field. The panel will be moderated by David Bleicken, CFPB Deputy Associate Director, Supervision, Enforcement and Fair Lending. Experts on the panel will include:
• William MacLeod, Partner at Kelley Drye; former Director of the FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection and Bureau of Competition
• Eric Mogilnicki, Partner at Covington & Burling; former Chief of Staff, Senator Ted Kennedy
• Lucy Morris, Partner Hudson Cook; former CFPB Deputy Enforcement Director
• Nicholas Smyth, Assistant Director of the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, Senior Deputy Attorney General

Members of the public that plan to attend the symposium should RSVP at: https://consumer-financial-protection-bureau.forms.fm/cfpb-symposium-on-unfair-deceptive-or-abusive-acts-or-practices-udaap-2

AWS Announces General Availability of Amazon Personalize

June 10, 2019 at 6:07 PM EDT

Amazon Personalize enables developers to build applications with the same machine learning technology used by Amazon.com for real-time personalized recommendations – with no machine learning expertise required

Yamaha, Subway, and Zola among customers using Amazon Personalize

SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Jun. 10, 2019– Today, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ: AMZN), announced the general availability of Amazon Personalize, bringing the same machine learning technology used by Amazon.com to AWS customers for use in their applications – with no machine learning experience required. Amazon Personalize makes it easy to develop applications with a wide array of personalization use cases, including specific product recommendations, individualized search results, and customized direct marketing. Amazon Personalize is a fully managed service that trains, tunes, and deploys custom, private machine learning models. Amazon Personalize provisions the necessary infrastructure and manages the entire machine learning pipeline, including processing the data, identifying features, selecting algorithms, and training, optimizing, and hosting the results. Customers receive results via an Application Programming Interface (API) and only pay for what they use, with no minimum fees or upfront commitments. To get started with Amazon Personalize, visit https://aws.amazon.com/personalize/

Amazon has pioneered the use of machine learning for recommendation and personalization for more than 20 years. During that time, customers have asked for access to these capabilities so they could enjoy similar benefits when running their businesses. However, the technology can be challenging to deliver effectively across a variety of use cases because there isn’t a single, master personalization algorithm. Each use case – videos, music, products, or news articles – has its own specificities, which requires a unique mix of data, algorithms, and optimizations to create a result. Today’s general availability of Amazon Personalize provides a major step toward putting the power of Amazon’s experience in machine learning into the hands of everyday application developers and data scientists at businesses of all sizes across all industries. Amazon Personalize reduces the time to build a custom model from months to days. When using Amazon Personalize, customers provide the service an activity stream from an application (e.g. page views, signups, or purchases) along with an inventory of the items to recommend (e.g. music, videos, products, or news articles), and receive recommendations via an API. Amazon Personalize does this by processing and examining the data, identifying what is meaningful, selecting from multiple advanced algorithms built and refined over years for Amazon’s retail business, and training and optimizing a personalization model customized to the data. During the whole time, all of the data is kept completely private, owned entirely by the customer.

“We are excited to share with AWS customers the expertise we’ve developed during two decades of using machine learning to deliver great experiences on Amazon.com,” said Swami Sivasubramanian, Vice President of Machine Learning, Amazon Web Services, Inc. “Customers have been asking for Amazon Personalize, and we are eager to see how they implement these services to delight their own end users. And the best part is that these artificial intelligence services, like Amazon Personalize, do not require any machine learning experience to immediately train, tune, and deploy models to meet their business demands.”

Amazon Personalize is available today in US East (Ohio), US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Asia Pacific (Singapore) and EU (Ireland) with additional regions coming soon.

Yamaha Corporation of America (YCA) offers a large assortment of high-quality musical instruments and audio products to U.S. customers. Their products include Keyboard, Guitar, Winds and Strings, Percussion, Professional Audio and Consumer Audio. “Amazon Personalize saves us up to 60% of the time needed to set up and tune the infrastructure and algorithms for our machine learning models when compared to building and configuring the environment on our own. It is ideal for both small developer teams who are trying to build the case for ML and large teams who are trying to iterate rapidly at reasonable cost. Even better, we expect Amazon Personalize to be more accurate than other recommender systems, allowing us to delight our customers with highly personalized product suggestions during their shopping experience, which we believe will increase our average order value and the total number of orders,” said Ishwar Bharbhari, Director of Information Technology, Yamaha Corporation of America.

The Subway restaurant chain offers guests in over 100 countries quality ingredients and flavor combinations with nearly 7 million made-to-order sandwiches created daily. “At Subway, guest experience matters,” said Neville Hamilton, Interim Chief Information Officer at Subway. “Using Amazon Personalize, we can quickly deliver personalized recommendations for our endless varieties of ingredients and flavors to fit the unique lifestyles of our busy guests. Amazon Personalize lets our team use simple API calls to curate recommendations without requiring machine learning expertise. We are looking forward to continuing to work with Amazon Personalize to provide the best experience to our guests who want to eat fresh. We have already successfully tested using Amazon Personalize to provide recommendations to guests making orders from our app, and are excited to expand into personalized app notifications in the near future.”

Zola is the fastest-growing wedding company in the country using design and technology to create the easiest wedding planning and registry experience for couples. “At Zola, we develop innovative wedding planning tools. We want to be there along the entire wedding journey and provide the best possible recommendations to our customers based on their style, interests, or preferences. Until now, those recommendations have been implemented via rule-based ranking, popularity, or more recently, via a similarity model calculated internally. These methods were difficult to maintain and scale. Amazon Personalize provides us with state-of-the-art algorithms and an end-to-end personalization solution that enables us to provide recommendations and personalized content in real time. Being a small team, using Amazon Personalize will allow us to quickly deliver capabilities that would have otherwise taken a much larger team and several months development time,” said Stephane Bailliez, Vice President of Engineering at Zola.

Segment provides customer data infrastructure allowing companies to collect, unify, and connect their first-party customer data to over 200 marketing, analytics, and data warehousing tools with just a flip of a switch. “Today’s consumers expect real-time personalization and recommendations, yet the reality for most companies is that the amount of engineering required makes that experience very hard to create, let alone deliver,” said Tom Pinckney, Head of Partnerships at Segment. “Amazon Personalize brings Amazon’s world-class machine learning technology to every company. By combining it with Segment’s Customer Data Infrastructure, our customers can deliver these highly individualized recommendations at scale and in real time. We have been impressed and plan to extend its functionality for Segment with further integration in the future.”

About Amazon Web Services

For almost 13 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. AWS offers over 165 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 66 Availability Zones (AZs) within 21 geographic regions, spanning the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, India, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Sweden, and the UK. Millions of customers including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.

About Amazon

Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa are some of the products and services pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit amazon.com/about and follow @AmazonNews.

Russian authorities have dropped all charges against Russian journalist Ivan Golunov

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 11, 2019

(NEW YORK)– In response to the news that Russian authorities have dropped all charges against Russian journalist Ivan Golunov, PEN America issued the following statement:

“The dropping of all charges against Ivan Golunov is cause for celebration, both because it means this dogged reporter is free to return to his work, and also because it reminds us that even an intransigent government can be moved by international outcry. We all know well that Golunov could easily have ended up spending years in prison as a result of these spurious charges, but the solidarity shown by journalists and newspapers in Russia and the voices from across the globe denouncing Golunov’s arrest helped stave off this injustice. The Russian government should know that the world will not look away from its attempts to silence truth-tellers.”

CONTACT: PEN America media consultant Suzanne Trimel, strimel@pen.org

South Carolina Man Sentenced for Attempting to Provide Material Support to ISIS

Department of Justice

Office of Public Affairs

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Tuesday, June 11, 2019

South Carolina Man Sentenced for Attempting to Provide Material Support to ISIS

Zakaryia Abdin, 20, of Ladson, South Carolina, was sentenced yesterday to 20 years to be followed by a lifetime of supervised release for attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a designated foreign terrorist organization. Abdin previously entered a guilty plea in August of 2018 and has remained in federal custody since his arrest by the FBI in March of 2017.

Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers, U.S. Attorney Sherri A. Lydon for the District of South Carolina and Special Agent in Charge Jody Norris of the FBI’s Columbia Division made the announcement. Abdin appeared before U.S. District Court Judge Richard M. Gergel.

“The Department of Justice is committed to holding accountable U.S. citizens, like Abdin, and others who would leave here to provide material support to ISIS overseas,” said Assistant Attorney General Demers. “Thanks to the great work of the agents and prosecutors on this case, his plans were thwarted and with this sentence he is now being held accountable for his crime. The National Security Division is committed to identifying and bringing to justice those who would provide material support to foreign terrorist organizations.”

“The most important job of government is protecting the people of the United States from harm, whether it comes from criminals or terrorists,” said U.S. Attorney Lydon. “This case is an example of law enforcement doing exactly that, and preventing what could have been a much greater tragedy. I am proud of the great work JTTF did in preventing this defendant from joining ISIS and fighting on their behalf, whether that would have been domestically or internationally. His goal was to kill on behalf of ISIS, whether that was in the United States or abroad. His goal was to be an ISIS soldier, and to kill Americans wherever ISIS directed him.” U.S. Attorney Lydon commended the intense work of Charleston’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and noted that this is the first conviction for a person attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization in the District of South Carolina.

“Once again, the Joint Terrorism Task Force has uncovered, investigated and prevented terrorist activity with roots in South Carolina” said Special Agent in Charge Norris. “These results are made possible by the coordinated efforts of our federal, state and local partners, who are committed to sharing information and resources to protect our communities.”

The FBI arrested the defendant at the Charleston International Airport on March 30, 2017, when he attempted to board an airplane in order to travel overseas to join ISIS.

According to court documents, Abdin, a U.S. citizen, began his efforts on Jan. 3, 2017, when he created a social media account to be used to join ISIS. On Jan. 20, 2017, Abdin visited the FBI in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, to meet with an FBI Special Agent from the Joint Terrorism Task Force. During this visit, the agent advised Abdin about the FBI’s role in conducting counterterrorism investigations, discussed various statutory definitions (including terrorism), and told Abdin that ISIS was a designated foreign terrorist organization and that it was illegal to give any foreign terrorist organization any form of material support, including personnel.

After that date, Abdin began to seek a handler to get him overseas to Syria or Egypt to make contact with ISIS. Unbeknownst to him, he ended up making contact with an undercover FBI employee. Abdin believed this person was affiliated with ISIS. These communications continued up until he was arrested.

Abdin had extensive communications with the undercover FBI employee. During the course of these on line conversations, Abdin expressed continued loyalty to ISIS. He said he had given a pledge of loyalty to ISIS in 2014 and provided a video of a new pledge to Abu Baker al Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed leader of ISIS, in which Abdin pledged to “wage jihad against the enemy of Allah.”

Abdin also indicated that he wished to join ISIS and its so-called caliphate and requested to serve in combat. He stated that he was proficient with various weapons, including pistols and AK and SKS rifles. He also asserted that he was well prepared, knew how to shoot, and had experience with and was reliable in close combat. He also purchased weapons, including an SKS assault rifle, modifying it to expand its capacity from a 10 round magazine to a 30 round magazine. Abdin practiced with an AK assault rifle at a local gun store, and with an SKS assault rifle and a 9mm handgun at a local outdoor shooting range outside of Charleston.

Abdin took a picture of himself carrying the 9mm in his waistband and took a picture of himself practicing shooting at night at the local outdoor range, and sent these to the undercover FBI employee.

Abdin undertook concrete steps to join ISIS and travel overseas to fight jihad. He applied for a passport. On March 22, 2017, the FBI was notified Abdin’s passport was delivered to his residence in Ladson. Later on the same date, Abdin sent a message to the undercover FBI employee to tell him to “let the brothers know I am coming very soon.”

On March 23, 2017, Abdin made flight reservations aboard a commercial airline departing Charleston with a final destination of Amman, Jordan. The date for travel was set for March 30, 2017. After making the reservations, Abdin told to undercover FBI employee that he was scheduled to arrive in Amman, Jordan on April 1, 2017.

On March 30, 2017, Abdin arrived at the Charleston International Airport, checked in for his departing flight, and was subsequently arrested.

Abdin faces a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. The maximum statutory sentence is prescribed by Congress and is provided here for informational purposes. Any sentencing of the defendant will be determined by the court based on the advisory Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

This case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Nathan Williams and Sean Kittrell of the District of South Carolina and Trial Attorney Jennifer Burke of the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section.

Former Owners of T-Mobile Retail Store Arrested on Federal Charges Alleging $25 Million Scheme to Illicitly Unlock Cell Phones

Department of Justice

U.S. Attorney’s Office

Central District of California

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Monday, June 10, 2019

Former Owners of T-Mobile Retail Store Arrested on Federal Charges Alleging $25 Million Scheme to Illicitly Unlock Cell Phones

LOS ANGELES – Two men who formerly owned a T-Mobile retail store in Eagle Rock were arrested this morning on federal charges that allege a scheme to use stolen T-Mobile employee credentials to illegally infiltrate the mobile phone company’s internal computer systems to “unlock” cell phones so they could be used on any carrier’s network. The defendants were arrested pursuant to a 21-count grand jury indictment outlining the scheme that investigators believe earned the two men more than $25 million.

Argishti Khudaverdyan, 41, of Burbank, and Alen Gharehbagloo, 40, of La Cañada Flintridge, are charged with multiple felonies, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, bank fraud, computer fraud and money laundering. The indictment also seeks the forfeiture of more than $2.25 million seized from several bank accounts and residential properties allegedly purchased with ill-gotten gains.

Khudaverdyan and Gharehbagloo are expected to be arraigned on the indictment this afternoon in United States District Court in downtown Los Angeles.

According to the indictment, for the first six months of 2017, Khudaverdyan and Gharehbagloo were co-owners of Top Tier Solutions, Inc., a T-Mobile premium retail store in the Eagle Rock Plaza in Northeastern Los Angeles. During this time, most cellular phone companies – including T-Mobile – “locked” their customers’ phones so they could be used only on the company’s network until the customers’ phone-purchase and service contracts had been fulfilled. If customers wanted to switch to a different carrier, their phones had to be “unlocked.”

Khudaverdyan and Gharehbagloo allegedly conspired to fraudulently unlock T-Mobile phones, which would allow T-Mobile customers to stop using T-Mobile’s services and thereby deprive T-Mobile of revenue generated from customers’ service contracts and equipment installment plans. The defendants also allegedly conspired to “whitelist” or “clean” phones that had been reported lost or stolen so they could be activated again.

Between August 2014 and January 2019, Khudaverdyan and Gharehbagloo allegedly advertised their unlocking services through brokers, email solicitations and websites such as unlocks247.com. The defendants falsely claimed they provided “official” T-Mobile unlocks.

In order to gain unauthorized access to T-Mobile’s protected internal computers, Khudaverdyan obtained T-Mobile employees’ credentials through various means, including phishing emails that appeared to be legitimate T-Mobile correspondence. The fraudulent emails were used by Khudaverdyan to deceive T-Mobile employees to log in with their employee credentials so that Khudaverdyan could harvest the employees’ information and fraudulently unlock the phones, according to the indictment. Khudaverdyan and Gharehbagloo, assisted by a co-conspirator, allegedly used the Wi-Fi access points inside T-Mobile Stores to log onto the company’s internal network using compromised employee credentials.

Investigators have determined that Khudaverdyan and Gharehbagloo obtained more than $25 million for these illicit activities. They allegedly used these illegal proceeds to pay for, among other things, real properties in Burbank, Northridge and La Cañada Flintridge.

The indictment in this case was returned by a federal grand jury on June 6 and unsealed today.

An indictment contains allegations that a defendant has committed a crime. Every defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

If Khudaverdyan is convicted of all 17 counts in which he is charged, he would face a statutory maximum of 237 years in federal prison. If convicted of all 15 counts with which he is charged, Gharehbagloo would face a statutory maximum of 235 years in federal prison.

This matter is being investigated by the United States Secret Service Electronic Crimes Task Force (ECTF) in Los Angeles and IRS Criminal Investigation’s Western Area Cyber Crime Unit. The ECTF includes representatives of the Secret Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office, and the California Highway Patrol.

This case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Jennie L. Wang of the Cyber and Intellectual Property Crimes Section and Special Assistant United States Attorney Ryan Waters of the Asset Forfeiture Section.

Former Colorado Springs Sheriff’s Deputy Sentenced to Nine Years in Prison for Receiving and Possessing Child Pornography

Department of Justice

U.S. Attorney’s Office

Southern District of Florida

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Monday, June 10, 2019

Former Colorado Springs Sheriff’s Deputy Sentenced to Nine Years in Prison for Receiving and Possessing Child Pornography

Donald Glenn Beasley (“Beasley”), 56, of Key Largo, was sentenced today by U.S. District Court Judge K. Michael Moore to 108 months in prison and 20 years of supervised release for receiving and possessing child pornography in connection with internet downloads Beasley made of child pornography.

Ariana Fajardo Orshan, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida and George Piro, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), Miami Field Office, made the announcement.

Beasley, a former sheriff’s deputy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, had been downloading child pornography on a peer-to-peer network and utilizing a state of the art encryption when he became known to FBI special agents. According to the stipulated facts filed in court, on September 20, 2018, a search warrant was executed at Beasley’s residence located at 95500 Overseas Highway in Key Largo, Florida. Pursuant to the search warrant, law enforcement searched a Starcraft trailer, which records checks revealed was registered to Beasley.

After a search of the Starcraft trailer, law enforcement seized various electronic items, including Beasley’s laptop and 3 external hard drives. The forensic examination of the items revealed multiple videos and numerous images of child pornography, many involving minor children under the age of 12. On February 11, 2019, Beasley pled guilty to the receipt and possession of child pornography.

U.S. Attorney Fajardo Orshan commended the investigatory efforts of the FBI in this matter. She thanked the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for their assistance. This case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Alejandra L. López.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorney’s Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, 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 to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.

Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the District Court for the Southern District of Florida at www.flsd.uscourts.gov or on https://pacer.flsd.uscourts.gov.

Former pro baseball player sentenced to federal prison in Operation Vanilla Gorilla

Department of Justice

U.S. Attorney’s Office

Southern District of Georgia

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Monday, June 10, 2019

Former pro baseball player sentenced to federal prison in Operation Vanilla Gorilla

DJ Driggers admitted meth trafficking, firearms possession

SAVANNAH, GA: A former professional baseball player has been sentenced to nearly five years in federal prison for his role in a drug trafficking network dismantled in Operation Vanilla Gorilla.

Darren J. Driggers, also known as “DJ” and “eBay,” 26, of Bloomingdale, Ga., was sentenced to 57 months in prison by U.S. District Judge R. Stan Baker for Conspiracy to Possess with Intent to Distribute and to Distribute Controlled Substances and for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, said Bobby L. Christine, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia.

At the completion of his incarceration, Driggers will be on supervised release for three years. There is no parole in the federal system. Because he was on probation when he committed his offense, his federal sentence will be served consecutively to his sentence for violating probation.

In November 2018, a federal grand jury indicted Driggers and 42 other defendants as part of Operation Vanilla Gorilla, an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) investigation into a drug trafficking organization associated with the Ghost Face Gangsters, a violent criminal street gang. Of the 43 defendants, 41 have been convicted of federal charges in this multi-district case.

According to information presented in court filings and testimony, Driggers and other conspirators, including associates of the Ghost Face Gangsters, distributed crystal methamphetamine throughout southern Georgia. Driggers, a convicted felon, also possessed and sold stolen firearms to conspirators to assist the drug trafficking organization by promoting a climate of fear. During the investigation, Driggers bragged to federal agents that he was nicknamed “eBay” because he sold stolen goods via social media platforms.

Prior to his criminal activity, Driggers was selected in June 2012 in the 22^nd round of the Major League Baseball draft by the Detroit Tigers. The following year he received a 50-game suspension after failing a drug test, and in January 2014 he was released from the MLB after positive drug screens. Driggers explained to the United States Probation Office that “I decided I liked meth better than baseball.”

“DJ Driggers was a gifted athlete who did what thousands of hard-working athletes can only dream about: He was chosen to play professional sports,” said Bobby L. Christine, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia. “Instead, he fouled out of his once-promising career by abusing illegal drugs, squandering a truly major-league opportunity and will now spend half a decade in prison for gun and drug charges.”

“This is yet another example of the law enforcement community working together to make our streets and communities a safer place to live, said Beau Kolodka, Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Atlanta Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). “Dismantling these violent drug trafficking networks continues to be a priority for ATF and our law enforcement partners.”

“Methamphetamine continues to dominate the country as the most abused illicit drug,” said Jamie Jones, Special Agent in Charge of the Savannah Office of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI). “Driggers is just one of many victims whose lives have been destroyed because of meth. However, Driggers made the decision to become a distributor of this poison, which in turn affected countless others. This was his downfall, as distributors become targets of law enforcement and go to prison or in some cases end up dead in the street. Fortunately for Driggers, he goes to prison and not the graveyard.”

Operation Vanilla Gorilla was investigated under the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF), the premier U.S. Department of Justice program to dismantle multi-jurisdictional drug trafficking organizations. The case was investigated by the ATF, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the GBI, the Chatham County Narcotics Team (CNT), the Georgia Department of Corrections Intelligence Division, the Savannah Police Department, the Chatham County Sheriff’s Office, the Bryan County Sheriff’s Office, the Richmond Hill Police Department, the Pooler Police Department, the Effingham County Sheriff’s Office and the Bloomingdale Police Department, with assistance from the U.S. Marshals Service.

This case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys E. Greg Gilluly Jr. and Frank Pennington.

Owners of Los Angeles Home Health Agency Sentenced to Prison for Role in Health Care Fraud that Defrauded Medicare

Department of Justice

Office of Public Affairs

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Tuesday, June 11, 2019

Owners of Los Angeles Home Health Agency Sentenced to Prison for Role in Health Care Fraud that Defrauded Medicare

Two owners and operators of a Los Angeles, California, home health agency were sentenced to 120 and 78 months in prison yesterday for their roles in a scheme to bill Medicare for various items and services, including home health services, diagnostic testing, medical procedures and durable medical equipment that were not medically necessary and/or were not provided.

Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Nicola T. Hanna of the Central District of California, Special Agent in Charge Christian J. Schrank of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General’s (HHS-OIG) Los Angeles Regional Office, Assistant Director in Charge Paul D. Delacourt of the FBI’s Los Angeles Division and Special Agent in Charge Ryan Korner of the IRS Criminal Investigations’ (IRS-CI) Los Angeles Field Office made the announcement.

Angela Avetisyan, 43, of Glendale, California, was sentenced to 120 months in prison by U.S. District Judge Otis D. Wright II of the Central District of California, who also ordered Avetisyan to pay $4,283,674 in restitution and to forfeit all right, title, and interest in $172,000 seized by the government in May 2014, as well as six real properties purchased with fraud proceeds. The Court ordered Avetisyan to make an immediate partial restitution payment of $10,000.

Ashot Minasyan, 61, of North Hollywood, California, was sentenced to 78 months in prison by Judge Wright, who also ordered Minasyan to pay $4,283,674 in restitution and to forfeit all right, title, and interest in the same $172,000 and six real properties. The Court ordered Minasyan to make an immediate partial restitution payment of $100,000.

Avetisyan and Minasyan were charged along with Robert Glazer, 73, and Marina Merino, 62, both of Los Angeles, in a second superseding indictment returned in June 2015. On June 7, 2019, co-defendants Glazer and Merino were found guilty after a seven day trial of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and health care fraud.

Avetisyan and Minasyan each pleaded guilty on Oct. 9, 2018, to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud. As part of their guilty pleas, Avetisyan and Minasyan admitted that as co-owners and operators of Fifth Avenue Home Health (Fifth Avenue), a home health agency located in Los Angeles, they engaged in a conspiracy with Glazer, Merino and others to recruit Medicare patients to Glazer’s clinic so that Glazer could use those patients’ information to bill for medically unnecessary outpatient clinic services and refer those patients for medically unnecessary home health services from Fifth Avenue and other home health agencies. Avetisyan and Minasyan further admitted that they paid Merino and other patient recruiters illegal kickbacks to bring Medicare patients to the Glazer clinic.

As found at sentencing by the Court, Avetisyan and Minasyan, along with their co-conspirators, submitted and caused to be submitted false and fraudulent claims for home health services that were medically unnecessary, for services that were not provided and for claims obtained by the payment of illegal kickbacks.

This case was investigated by the HHS-OIG, the FBI and IRS-CI. Trial Attorneys Claire Yan, Robyn N. Pullio and Emily Z. Culbertson of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section are prosecuting the case. The Asset Forfeiture Section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California is handling the asset forfeiture aspects of the case.

The Fraud Section leads the Medicare Strike Force, which is part of a joint initiative between the Department of Justice and HHS to focus their efforts to prevent and deter fraud and enforce current anti-fraud laws around the country. Since its inception in March 2007, the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, which maintains 14 strike forces operating in 23 districts, has charged nearly 4,000 defendants who have collectively billed the Medicare program for more than $14 billion. In addition, the HHS Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, working in conjunction with HHS-OIG, are taking steps to increase accountability and decrease the presence of fraudulent providers.

To learn more about the Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team (HEAT), go to: www.stopmedicarefraud.gov.

Nearly 1,700 Suspected Child Sex Predators Arrested During Operation “Broken Heart”

Department of Justice

Office of Public Affairs

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Tuesday, June 11, 2019

Nearly 1,700 Suspected Child Sex Predators Arrested During Operation “Broken Heart”

The Department of Justice today announced the arrest of almost 1,700 suspected online child sex offenders during a two-month, nationwide operation conducted by Internet Crimes Against Children task forces. The task forces identified 308 offenders who either produced child pornography or committed child sexual abuse, and 357 children who suffered recent, ongoing or historical sexual abuse or were exploited in the production of child pornography.

The 61 ICAC task forces, located in all 50 states and comprised of more than 4,500 federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies, led the coordinated operation known as “Broken Heart” during the months of April and May 2019. During the course of the operation, the task forces investigated more than 18,500 complaints of technology-facilitated crimes targeting children and delivered more than 2,150 presentations on internet safety to over 201,000 youth and adults.

“The sexual abuse of children is repugnant, and it victimizes the most innocent and vulnerable of all,” Attorney General William P. Barr said. “We must bring the full force of the law against sexual predators, and with the help of our Internet Crimes Against Children program, we will. Over the span of just two months, our ICAC task forces investigated more than 18,000 complaints of internet-related abuse and helped arrest 1,700 alleged abusers. I would like to thank our Office of Justice Programs, all of the task force members, and especially the state and local partners who helped us achieve these important results. We are committed to bringing the defendants in these cases to justice and protecting every American child.”

The operation targeted suspects who: (1) produce, distribute, receive and possess child pornography; (2) engage in online enticement of children for sexual purposes; (3) engage in the sex trafficking of children; and (4) travel across state lines or to foreign countries and sexually abuse children.

The ICAC Program is funded through the Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) within the Office of Justice Programs (OJP). In 1998, OJJDP launched the ICAC Task Force Program to help federal, state and local law enforcement agencies enhance their investigative responses to offenders who use the internet, online communication systems or computer technology to exploit children. To date, ICAC task forces have reviewed more than 922,000 complaints of child exploitation, which have resulted in the arrest of more than 95,500 individuals. In addition, since the ICAC program’s inception, more than 708,500 law enforcement officers, prosecutors and other professionals have been trained on techniques to investigate and prosecute ICAC-related cases.

For more information, visit the ICAC Task Force webpage. For state-level Operation Broken Heart results, please contact the appropriate state ICAC task force commander. Contact information for task force commanders is available online.

The Office of Justice Programs, directed by Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Matt M. Dummermuth, provides federal leadership, grants, training, technical assistance, and other resources to improve the nation’s capacity to prevent and reduce crime, assist victims and enhance the rule of law by strengthening the criminal justice system. More information about OJP and its components can be found at www.ojp.gov.

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Long-term islet transplant recipients show near-normal glucose control

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Continuous glucose monitoring demonstrates improved time-in-range, key metabolic data compared to hybrid closed-loop systems

Diabetes Research Institute Foundation

Continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) evaluations in islet transplant recipients who have been insulin independent for an average of 10 years show near-normal glycemic profiles and time-in-range metrics, according to data presented by the Diabetes Research Institute at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. The findings, which were accepted as a late-breaking poster at the American Diabetes Association (ADA) 79th Scientific Sessions, June 7 – 11, 2019 in San Francisco, CA, demonstrate that islet transplantation can be a successful long-term cell therapy for select patients with type 1 diabetes.

The DRI team evaluated five of its adult subjects who received intrahepatic (in the liver) islet transplants between 2002 – 2010 and have since remained insulin independent for seven to 16+ years. During their last study follow-up, the subjects completed a 7-day, non-blinded CGM to assess their glycemic profiles. Compared to current recommended CGM goals for adults with type 1 diabetes on a hybrid closed-loop system, all patients demonstrated improved CGM time-in-range, reduction in glucose variability, and prevention of hypoglycemia. A sampling of the results is as follows:

CGM Glucose Range	CGM % Time-in-Range recommended goals for hybrid closed-loop system	CGM % Time-in-Range in DRI islet transplant subjects with long-term insulin independence
(mg/dL)
70-180	≥70	96.4
<70	≤3	0.9
<54	≤1	0.1

In addition, time in the more stringent glucose range of 70-140 mg/dL was 83.1%, with a mean sensor glucose (SG) value of 116 mg/dL and an average HbA1c of 5.7%. The ADA’s recommended HbA1c goal is <7% for adults with diabetes.

“Using continuous glucose monitoring, we now have the ability to accurately evaluate patients’ glucose profiles and their variability. The CGM data we have obtained from our islet transplant patients clearly demonstrates that islet transplantation can result in glucose levels that are close to those in people who do not have type 1 diabetes, even 10 years or more after undergoing the cell-replacement procedure,” said David Baidal, M.D., assistant professor of medicine and member of the DRI’s Clinical Islet Transplant Program. One of the principal investigators of the study, Dr. Baidal is presenting the results at the ADA conference.

“Although not all subjects remain insulin independent, like the subjects described in this presentation, after an islet transplant a significant number of them continue with excellent graft function for over 10 years that allows them to have near-normal glucose metabolism in the absence of severe hypoglycemia on small doses of insulin,” said Rodolfo Alejandro, M.D., director of the Clinical Cell Transplant Program and also a principal investigator of the study. Dr. Alejandro will be presenting these results at the upcoming 17th World Congress of the International Pancreas & Islet Transplant Association, July 2-5, 2019 in Lyon, France.

“This report confirms the superiority of transplantation of insulin-producing cells compared to insulin therapy, with glucose control results that were even better than the goals of CGM in hybrid closed-loop systems. Hopefully, this will be of assistance in bringing islet transplantation closer to FDA approval, allowing the treatment to be made available to U.S. patients, as has already been the case in several other countries, for many years,” said Camillo Ricordi, M.D., Stacy Joy Goodman Professor of Surgery and director of the Diabetes Research Institute, who was recently named the world’s leading expert in islet transplantation by Expertscape. Dr. Ricordi is well-known for inventing the machine (Ricordi Chamber) that made it possible to isolate large numbers of islet cells from the human pancreas and for performing the first series of successful clinical islet transplants that reversed diabetes after implantation of donor purified islets into the liver of recipients with diabetes.

In type 1 diabetes, the insulin-producing islets cells of the pancreas have been mistakenly destroyed by the immune system, requiring patients to manage their blood sugar levels through a daily regimen of insulin therapy. Islet transplantation has allowed some patients to live without the need for insulin injections after receiving a transplant of donor cells. Some patients who have received islet transplants have been insulin independent for more than a decade, as DRI researchers have published. Currently, islet transplantation remains an experimental procedure limited to a select group of adult patients with type 1 diabetes.

In 2016, the National Institutes of Health-sponsored Clinical Islet Transplantation Consortium reported results from its Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-authorized Phase 3 multi-center trial, of which the DRI was a part, indicating that islet transplantation was effective in preventing severe hypoglycemia (low blood sugar levels), a particularly feared complication in type 1 diabetes that can lead to seizures, loss of consciousness and even death. The study was a significant step toward making islet transplantation an approved treatment for people with type 1 diabetes and reimbursable through health insurance, as it is in several other countries around the world.

###

About the Diabetes Research Institute

The Diabetes Research Institute at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine leads the world in cure-focused research. As one of the largest and most comprehensive research centers dedicated to curing diabetes, the DRI is aggressively working to develop a biological cure by restoring natural insulin production and normalizing blood sugar levels without imposing other risks. Researchers have already shown that transplanted islet cells allow patients to live without the need for insulin therapy. Some study participants have maintained insulin independence for more than 10 years. The DRI is now building upon these promising outcomes through its BioHub strategy, a multidisciplinary, three-pronged approach for addressing the major challenges that stand in the way of a cure: eliminate the need for anti-rejection drugs, reset the immune system to block autoimmunity, and develop an unlimited supply of insulin-producing cells. For more information, please visit DiabetesResearch.org, call 800-321-3437, or Tweet @Diabetes_DRI.

Church & AP announce their biggest New Zealand tour yet

Fresh from the release of their compelling new track ‘Dandelion’, ‘Ready or Not’ rappers Church & AP announce their biggest New Zealand tour yet.

The tour sees Church & AP stepping up to bigger venues, giving more fans the chance to hear the best of the prolific partnership’s releases to date and experience their new music live on stage. Tickets go on sale at 9am on Tuesday 11 June.

The duo have recorded most of their debut album already, and will be heading back in to Red Bull Music Studios Auckland to wrap up the project ahead of release later this year.

“We’re used to working with nothing,” says Church.

“So having these resources at Red Bull has allowed us to operate at a new capacity. We’re not wasting any time.”

With their first international headline show taking place in London on 17 June, and ‘Dandelion’ finding favour with tastemakers and playlist makers, Church & AP are ready to show music fans why they’re the most exciting act in New Zealand hip hop.

Get in quick, you don’t want to miss out on the chance to see Church & AP before they get massive.

Links

facebook.com/churchandap/

Moda Culta Launches Loaded International Fashion Jobs Board

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Moda Culta Launches Loaded International Fashion Jobs Board

SHERIDAN, WY (June 9, 2019) – Fashion Industry professionals looking to expand the borders of their career now have a new resource to help them find the fashion jobs worldwide following the launch of International Fashion Jobs Board, Moda Culta. (Fashion News)

Boasting approximately 1000 jobs listed over a thirty-day period, Moda Culta features some fashion jobs in in Australia, UK, New Delhi, Canada, The United Arab Emirates and America. Moda Culta partnered with top recruiters in the fashion industry such as Who in the Zoo, CLIMB Retail Recruitment, Michael Page, and Office Angels to advertise the best fashion jobs.

Some of the fashion industry jobs currently listed on the job board are for Fashion Designers, Fashion Consultants, Fashion Associates, Fashion E-commerce Photographers and Fashion Instructors. Macy’s, Walmart, Everything Five Pounds are just a few of the top brands looking to fill vacancies for fashion industry jobs.

Moda Culta is a cultured fashion blog that provides the scoop on the latest fashion trends, videos, fashion news and shopping tips. (Fashion Magazine) The website also provides insight on how to make a career in the fashion industry. The blog and international fashion job board was founded by Waitman Gobble, a veteran in apparel manufacturing boasting more than 20 years’ experience in the industry. When asked about his motivation for creating the job board, Gobble explained: “I wanted to create a source for people who focus on fashion in their careers.”

The Moda Culta International Fashion Job board is easy to use. Job seekers can easily apply for any job they are interested in on the website or directly from the employer’s website. Moreover, new jobs are added daily, so the opportunities are limitless. For further information or to browse the vacancies on the Moda Culta, visit: https://modaculta.com/jobs.
###

Media contact: Waitman Gobble
Arduent Centisi LLC
Email: wago@culta.xyz

Waitman Gobble
Arduent Centisi LLC
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Daniel Marshall Brings Inaugural Modern Day Campfire to Graz, Austria – Arnold Schwarzenegger

Daniel Marshall Brings Inaugural Modern Day Campfire to Graz, Austria

DM Campfire Burns Hot in Graz, Austria – Childhood Home of Arnold Schwarzenegger

Los Angeles, CA (June 7, 2019) – Graz, Austria had its first DM Cigar Night. Hollywood cigar guru Daniel Marshall brought the Daniel Marshall Campfire cigar event to Graz, Austria, the childhood home of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Schwarzenegger Home, now a museum has rare Daniel Marshall Humidors and Cigars on display. The Graz star-studded event was hosted by Austrian real estate company, C & P Immobilien AG. Campfire events have been held worldwide from Beverly Hills to Berlin, Kitzbuhel, Austria and Shanghai.

Over 120 guests were in attendance including action star and former competitive bodybuilder Ralf Moeller, Olympic alpine medalist Hans Knauss, and No. 1 Austrian singer Andreas Gabalier. Those who attended the prestigious event enjoyed highly coveted Daniel Marshall cigars including the Golden Cigar and the Cigar Aficionado 92pt rated DM Red Label Robusto. Daniel Marshall’s Golden Cigar is the official gold cigar and is personally hand-rolled by Daniel Marshall with pure 24kt Florentine gold leaves. It is often hailed as one of the top celebratory cigars to create life’s most notable golden moments.

The Daniel Marshall Campfire event was celebrated by customers and friends of the hosts as they packed the rooftop terrace of C & P Immobilien AG’s Graz headquarters. DM cigars were eloquently paired with Padre Azul Tequila and Styrian white wine from the Golden Hill Chalets. The host Austrian real estate company was recently awarded the Fiabci Prix d’Excellence for the “Office” category. The award honors nationwide real estate projects with outstanding overall concepts. The “Oscar of the real estate industry” was awarded to the company recognizing their location as an outstanding Austrian real estate projects with innovative character and economic sustainability.

View Austria’s ORF Steiermark STEIRERBLICKE on the Daniel Marshall Modern Day Campfire Cigar Night in Graz Austria:

ORF Link 1

View Austria’s ORF SEITENBLICKE TV:

ORF Link 2

Video recap of the Graz Campfire:

2019 Graz Austria Campfire

To reserve your seat at the next exclusive “campfire” email: thecampfire@danielmarshall.com

For a look into Daniel Marshall Modern Day Campfire Experiences around the world visit:

Kitzbuhel Austria: 2019 Kitzbuhel Daniel Marshall Campfire

Potsdam, Germany: 2019 Potsdam Daniel Marshall Campfire

Beverly Hills: 2019 Beverly Hills Campfire

About Daniel Marshall:

Daniel Marshall, a 37-year veteran of the cigar industry is one of the leading names in the cigar world. He is top-rated Humidor designer and creator of the coveted 24kt Golden Cigar. DM Humidors & Cigars are enjoyed in the homes and offices of countless Hollywood celebrities, US presidents, dignitaries, titans of industry, fashion designers and the most discriminating cigar lovers worldwide. Marshall is also a cigar and humidor supplier of England’s Royal Family. Since 1982, Daniel Marshall has created and designed for the prestigious luxury gift houses Dunhill, Tiffany & Co., S.T. DuPont, Cartier, Hermes, Fred Joaillier, Harrod’s, Bally of Switzerland and Garrard’s of London. Daniel Marshall’s humidors are historic, with a collection on display at the Smithsonian Museum. One of DM’s highly collectible Governor Schwarzenegger Humidor’s broke sales records in 2016 at Leonardo DiCaprio’s Foundation Gala Fundraiser in St. Tropez. This extremely rare humidor topped the charts for highest amount paid for a modern day humidor with new world DM Cigars. In September 2017, a 1 of 1 humidor DM made for Prince Albert II of Monaco with Daniel Marshall Cigars was put on the block and raised 75,000 Euros to benefit our global oceans.

Visit Daniel Marshall’s site at www.danielmarshall.com. You can also find Daniel Marshall on Facebook at www.facebook.com/danielmarshallhumidorsandcigars or follow Daniel Marshall on Twitter @DMCigarWorld or Instagram @DMCigars for real-time updates.

For Daniel Marshall:

Trang Trinh, 714-973-8660, info@danielmarshall.com

Soliqua®Phase 3 results significantly lowered blood sugar levels compared to GLP-1 receptor agonist treatments

Soliqua®Phase 3 results significantly lowered blood sugarlevels compared to GLP-1 receptor agonist treatmentsPatients switched to Soliqua reached anaverage blood sugarbelowthe American Diabetes Association recommendedlevel of 7%FullPhase 3 data presentedtodayat the American Diabetes Association(ADA)79th Scientific Sessions PARIS–June 9, 2019–In a Phase 3 study1evaluating adults with type 2 diabetes inadequately controlled by GLP-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1 RA) treatments, Soliqua®/Suliqua®2(insulin glargine 100 Units/mL and lixisenatide) met the primary study objectivebydemonstrating astatistically superior reduction of average blood sugar level (HbA1c)after26weeks, compared with continuing GLP-1 RA treatment.The LixiLan-G study included either a daily or once-weekly GLP-1 RA treatmentas comparator. Morepatientswho switched to Soliqua achieved HbA1clevelsbelow 7%, a target recommended by the ADA, compared with those who stayed on previous GLP-1 RA therapy. More patients who switched to Soliqua also achieved the composite endpoint of HbA1cbelow 7% without documented symptomatichypoglycemia(low blood sugar levels).The study showed a safety profile consistent with the established profiles of the treatments studied: the most common classes of adverse event were gastrointestinal events (i.e., nausea, diarrhea and or vomiting) and hypoglycemia.1Blonde L et al, Presentation #149 OR, American Diabetes Association 79th Scientific Sessions, June 9, San Francisco, CA, U.S.2Soliqua®is an injectable prescription medicine that contains two diabetes medicines, insulin glargine and lixisenatide.Soliqua®is marketed in the EU as Suliqua®, where it is indicated in combination with metformin for the treatment of adults with type 2 diabetesmellitus to improve glycemic control when this has not been provided by metformin alone ormetformin combined with another oral glucose lowering medicinal product or with basal insulin. It is marketed in the U.S. as Soliqua®100/33, where it is indicatedas an adjunct to diet and exercise to improve glycemiccontrol in adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus.It is marketedas Soliqua®in other geographies where it is approved

The full Phase 3 data results were presented today for the first time as an oral presentation at the 79thScientific Sessions of theADAin San Francisco.“We are committed to providing people living with diabetes a broad range of options thatcan help support personalized care,”said Rachele Berria, Global Head of Diabetes Medical Affairs at Sanofi. “As the first comparison between Soliqua and both daily and weekly GLP-1 RA treatments, this study provides physicians with new data that they could use when consideringSoliqua as a part of a personalizedtreatment plan.”About the studyThe LixiLan-G study included 514 adults with type 2 diabetes who were inadequately controlled on a GLP-1 RA (either once-daily liraglutide or twice-daily exenatide, or once-weekly exenatide extended release, albiglutide or dulaglutide) and metformin (with or without pioglitazone, with or without a sodium-glucose transport protein 2 inhibitor [SGLT2i]).Participants were randomized to either switch to Soliqua or continue theirprevious GLP-1 RA treatment, while maintaining their other pre-trial anti-diabetic medication. Adherence to allocated treatment was monitored and reinforced throughout the study.The primary objective was to demonstrate superior reduction of HbA1cwith Soliqua versus continuation ofthe previousGLP-1 RA after 26 weeks. Secondary objectivesincludedcomparison of the overall efficacy and safety ofSoliqua to continued GLP-1 RA treatment. After 26 weeks, patients who switched to Soliqua saw a 0.6% greater reduction in HbA1cversus continuing treatment with a GLP-1RA:SoliquaGLP-1 RAMean HbA1cat baseline7.86%7.88%Mean HbA1cat Week 266.7%7.4%Reduction in HbA1c-1.02%-0.38%Least squares mean difference-0.64%95% Confidence interval-0.77to -0.51p-value<0.0001More patients who switched to Soliqua achieved HbA1cbelow the 7%target recommended by the ADAversus those treated with GLP-1RA(difference: 36%, p<0.0001).The study also evaluated compositetargets

of HbA1cbelow 7% without documented symptomatic hypoglycemia(<54mg/dL or ≤70mg/dL, respectively):SoliquaGLP-1 RA% of patientsachieving HbA1c< 7%62%26%% of patients achieving HbA1c<7% with no documented (≤70 mg/dL) symptomatic hypoglycemia43%25%% of patients achieving HbA1c<7% with no documented(<54 mg/dL) symptomatic hypoglycemia57%25%The study showed a safety profile consistent with previous studies:22% of patients who switched to Soliqua experienced gastrointestinal events (nausea, diarrheaor vomiting), compared with 10% of patients who continued previoustreatment with GLP-1 RA. Rates of hypoglycemiawere also consistent with the established safety profiles of thetreatments: 9% of patients who treated with Soliqua experienced at least one event, compared with <1% who remained on previous GLP-1 RA therapy.Participants treated with Soliqua were followed for a further 26 weeks. Data from this extension period will be presented at a later date.About SanofiSanofi is dedicated to supporting people through their health challenges. We are a global biopharmaceutical company focused on human health. We prevent illness with vaccines, provide innovative treatments to fight pain and ease suffering. We stand by the few who suffer from rare diseases and the millions with long-term chronic conditions.With more than 100,000 people in 100 countries, Sanofi is transforming scientific innovation into healthcare solutions around the globe.Sanofi, Empowering LifeMedia Relations ContactAshleigh KossTel.: +1 908-981-8745Ashleigh.Koss@sanofi.comInvestor Relations ContactGeorge GrofikTel.: +33 (0)1 53 77 45 45ir@sanofi.comSanofi Forward-Looking StatementsThis press release contains forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts. These statements include projections and estimates regarding the marketing and other potential of the product, or regarding potential future revenues from the product. Forward-looking statements are generally identified by the words “expects”, “anticipates”, “believes”, “intends”, “estimates”, “plans” and similar expressions. Although Sanofi’s management believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, investors are cautioned that forward-looking information and statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties, many of which are difficult to predict and generally beyond the control of Sanofi, that could cause actualresults and developments to differ materially fromthose expressed in, or implied or projected by, the forward-looking information and statements. These risks and uncertainties include among other things, unexpected regulatory actions or delays, or

government regulation generally, that could affect the availability or commercial potential of the product, the absence of guarantee that the product will be commercially successful, the uncertainties inherent in research and development, includingfuture clinical data and analysis of existing clinical data relating to the product, including post marketing, unexpected safety, quality or manufacturing issues, competition in general, risks associated with intellectual property and any related future litigation and the ultimate outcome of such litigation, and volatile economic conditions, as well as those risks discussed or identified in the public filings with the SEC and the AMF made by Sanofi, including those listed under “Risk Factors” and “Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements” in Sanofi’s annual report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2018. Other than as required by applicable law, Sanofi does not undertake any obligation to update or revise anyforward-looking information or statements.

PRESS RELEASE: Life Science Institute

For Immediate Release:
For More Information Contact: Gary Ruskin +1 415 944-7350 or Sarah Steele +44 7768653130

The nonprofit International Life Science Institute claims to conduct “science for the public good” that “improves human health and well-being and safeguards the environment,” but really is a food industry lobby group, according to a study published today in the journal Globalization and Health.

The study provides examples of how ILSI advances the interests of the food industry, especially by promoting industry-friendly science and arguments to policymakers. The study is based on documents obtained via state freedom of information requests by U.S. Right to Know, a nonprofit investigative research group focused on the food industry.

The study’s authors conclude that, “ILSI should be regarded as a lobby group and that academics and researchers, policy makers, the media, and the public should view ILSI’s research as promoting the interests of the food, beverage, supplement and agrichemical industries” and that its actions “counter healthy public policies.”

“ILSI is Big Food’s global stealth network to defeat scientists, regulators and others who point out the health risks of their products,” said Gary Ruskin, co-director of U.S. Right to Know. “Big Food wants you to believe that ILSI works for your health, but really it defends food industry profits.”

The Globalization and Health paper was co-authored by Sarah Steele, senior research associate at Jesus College and the University of Cambridge; Gary Ruskin, co-director of U.S. Right to Know; Lejla Sarcevic, Intellectual Forum senior research associate at Jesus College, Cambridge; Martin McKee, professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine; and, David Stuckler, professor at Bocconi University.

In January, two papers by Harvard Professor Susan Greenhalgh, in the BMJ and the Journal of Public Health Policy, revealed ILSI’s powerful influence on the Chinese government regarding issues related to obesity.

ILSI is incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, based in Washington DC. It was founded in 1978 by Alex Malaspina, a former senior vice president of Coca-Cola. It has 17 branches located all over the world.

As an example of how ILSI keeps in close alignment with Coca-Cola and the soda industry, the paper quotes an email from Malaspina in which he laments ILSI Mexico’s failure to follow the industry position on soda taxes. Malaspina describes “the mess ILSI Mexico is in because they sponsored in September a sweeteners conference when the subject of soft drinks taxation was discussed. ILSI is now suspending ILSI Mexico, until they correct their ways. A real mess.”

“Our findings only continue to add to the evidence that this non-profit organisation has been used by its corporate backers for years to counter public health policies. We contend that the International Life Sciences Institute should be regarded as an industry group – a private body – and regulated as such, not as a body acting for the greater good,” said the study lead author Dr. Sarah Steele, a researcher at Cambridge’s Department of Politics and International Studies.

Documents from the ILSI study will be posted in University of California, San Francisco’s Food Industry Documents Archive, in the U.S. Right to Know Food Industry Collection.

For more information about U.S. Right to Know, see our academic papers at https://usrtk.org/academic-work/. For more general information, see usrtk.org.

PRESS RELEASE: GRA MANAGEMENT AND PERSONNEL CHANGES

2nd June, 2019

PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRESS RELEASE: GRA MANAGEMENT AND PERSONNEL CHANGES

Accra, Sunday June 2, 2019…In line with ongoing reforms by Government at the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) to improve performance, consistent with the 2019 Budget (paragraph 288), there have been changes at the Top Management level of the institution. Also, about one thousand four hundred and eighteen (1,418) employees are being rotated to other areas of the organisation. Further changes will be made to retool GRA for the critical task of mobilizing revenue to finance improvements in the lives of our people.

The reorganisation has been necessitated by three (3) main factors:
First, the Institution has grown significantly over the years, and current revenues of approximately GH¢38 billion make it one of the biggest Institutions in Ghana. This has created the need for much stronger, world-class structures.
Secondly, the number of employees of the GRA has increased significantly to about 7,000 and another 5,000 have been added through NABCO to shore up the authority’s revenue mobilization capacity, bringing the total employees to 12,000. GRA is now one of the largest employers outside the Civil Service.
Thirdly, there has been increasing need for better domestic revenue mobilization in order to realise the Ghana Beyond Aid agenda. With Ghana’s
Revenue to GDP of 12.6%, below the West Africa average of 19.9%, there is the need to raise domestic revenue in a more efficient way in order to meet the country’s commitments. GRA revenues have failed to reach budget targets, and over the last three years there has been an accumulated gap of about GH¢3.5 billion.

Given all of the above factors, it has become necessary to make changes to the Management and organisational structure to make it a much better performing institution.

These changes are expected to bring several improvements in the institution. This includes bringing the best of private sector practices and combining that with public sector technical expertise to ensure that GRA is a better functioning institution. Additionally, these changes are expected to improve the overall level of professionalism and engender a customer-friendly mindset at GRA.

In line with expectations, the new team will be expected to drive a number of critical transformational changes:

Modernising and digitising tax processes and systems;

Introducing big data and block chain technologies to improve compliance;

Expanding the tax base to encompass more effectively the informal sector and professional classes (currently there are over 6 million eligible tax paying individuals, however, only about 2.5 million have been registered and only about 1.2 million are active direct tax payers); and

Developing a stronger culture of performance and accountability;

Enhancing staff integrity and anticorruption measures;

Increasing the quality of tax payer services;

Respecting the client (taxpayer);

Creating a fair and firm tax organisation that ensures equitable treatment of every tax payer;

Tackling revenue leakages across both Domestic Tax and Customs;

Ensuring that best practices are shared, to create a truly world-class organisation.

To drive this transformation, changes have been made at various levels across the entire organisation involving about one thousand four hundred and eighteen (1,418) employees who are being rotated to other areas of the Institution. At the leadership level, the following new appointments have been made:

Mr. Ammishaddai Owusu-Amoah Acting Commissioner for Domestic Tax Revenue Division

Colonel Kwadwo Damoah (Rtd), Acting Commissioner, Customs Division

Ms. Julie Essiam, Acting Commissioner, Support Services Division

We take this opportunity to thank the current leadership team at GRA who have brought GRA thus far. We wish the Commissioner-General and his new team success as they take the reins to lead GRA to the next level. END

ISSUED BY

PUBLIC RELATIONS UNIT

MINISTRY OF FINANCE

PRESS RELEASE: DSH Program Essential for Iowa’s Hospitals

For Immediate Release: May 23, 2019

Contact: Matt Sinovic, (515) 423-0133

In Case You Missed It:

DSH Program Essential for Iowa’s Hospitals

Des Moines, Iowa – Last week, 302 members of the House of Representatives sent a bipartisan letter to Congressional leaders calling for a delay in cuts to the Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) program. Three of Iowa’s four representatives, including Democrats and Republicans, signed the letter.

The Medicaid DSH program provides vital support to Iowa hospitals that serve a disproportionate number of Medicaid beneficiaries and uninsured patients. The DSH program is essential to ensuring that such hospitals can continue to serve low-income patients who don’t have private insurance.

“In treating those who have nowhere else to turn, these hospitals incur uncompensated costs…Medicaid DSH payments allow them to continue serving our constituents and communities,” the letter reads.

According to the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC), if the cuts are implemented, Iowa hospitals could lose $6.6 million the first year and double that number the following year. Industry experts warn that the proposed cuts to the program are unsustainable for struggling safety net hospitals, especially in rural areas, and could force some of them to reduce services or even close their doors.

The full letter can be read here.

Signees include:

Rep. Abby Finkenauer
(D, IA-01)
Rep. Cindy Axne (D,
IA-03)
Rep. Steve King (R,
IA-04)

PRESS RELEASE: Positive New Data with Multi-Cancer Early Detection Blood Test from CCGA Study

GRAIL Announces Positive New Data with Multi-Cancer Early Detection Blood Test from CCGA Study

May 31, 2019

— Investigational Multi-Cancer Blood Test Detects Strong Signal for 12 Deadly Cancer Types When They are Still Localized, with 99 Percent Specificity, and Identifies Tumor’s Tissue of Origin with High Accuracy —

— Data Presented at 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting Support Feasibility of GRAIL’s Multi-Cancer Approach —

— GRAIL Plans to Advance Development of Multi-Cancer Test Toward Commercialization —

MENLO PARK, Calif., May 31, 2019–GRAIL, Inc., a healthcare company focused on the early detection of cancer, today announced new data from the Circulating Cell-free Genome Atlas (CCGA) study that demonstrates the ability of GRAIL’s technology to detect cancer early with a single blood test. Data showed GRAIL’s investigational multi-cancer blood test detected a strong signal for 12 deadly cancer types at early stages with a very high specificity of at least 99 percent (or a false positive rate of one percent or less). In addition, the test identified where the cancer originated in the body (the tissue of origin) with high accuracy.

Detection rates (sensitivity) for the 12 deadly cancer types ranged from 59 to 86 percent at early stages (stages I-III). A combined analysis of this group of cancers showed robust detection at early stages (34 percent, 77 percent, and 84 percent at stages I, II, and III, respectively). In addition, a tissue of origin result was provided for 94 percent of all cancers detected and, of these, the test correctly identified the tissue of origin in 90 percent of cases.

The 12 pre-specified cancer types included anorectal, colorectal, esophageal, gastric, head and neck, hormone receptor negative breast, liver, lung, ovarian, and pancreatic cancers, as well as multiple myeloma and lymphoid neoplasms. Together, these cancer types account for approximately 63 percent of all cancer deaths in the United States.

These data will be presented in a poster tomorrow, Saturday, June 1 at the 2019 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting by Minetta Liu, MD, Research Chair and Professor, Department of Oncology, Mayo Clinic (Abstract 3049).

“These exciting results suggest we can achieve what we believe are the requirements for a cancer screening blood test, including detection of multiple deadly cancer types at early stages in a single test, high accuracy in determining where the cancer originated, and a very low false positive rate,” said Jennifer Cook, Chief Executive Officer at GRAIL. “Our improved methylation-based technology has the potential to address gaps that exist with today’s screening options, which are limited to a few cancer types and only screen for one cancer type at a time. Based on these positive data, we plan to advance development of our test toward commercialization.”

“These very promising data indicate that a highly specific blood test for early cancer detection is approaching reality,” said Dr. Liu, who is also an investigator on the CCGA study. “The exceptional accuracy in determining the tissue of origin across all stages for those malignancies with significant cancer-specific mortality suggests that, if a cancer is detected, the test will inform where the tumor originated in the majority of cases. This factor is critical to streamline the clinical workup.”

“When we set out on this journey, we knew that to be successful, a blood-based screening tool would need to detect the clinically important cancers and not contribute to overdiagnosis of indolent cancers at the earliest stages,” said Rick Klausner, MD, Former Director of the National Cancer Institute, and Founder and Director of GRAIL. “Data being presented at ASCO suggest GRAIL’s test preferentially detects the most lethal cancers and can detect tumors when they are still localized and amenable to successful treatment. The high detection rate of stage II cancers at 77 percent in the group of 12 deadly cancers is particularly compelling and supports the potential benefit of our multi-cancer approach.”

Additional Results

In the second pre-planned case-control sub-study of CCGA, GRAIL’s multi-cancer early detection blood test is being evaluated in approximately 4,500 participants for its ability to detect cancer and identify the tissue of origin when cancer is present. Data reported at ASCO are based on an initial analysis of 2,301 participants from the training phase of the sub-study, including 1,422 participants with more than 20 cancer types across all stages and 879 participants without diagnosed cancer. This sub-study is ongoing, and the company is planning to present additional results at future medical conferences.

All results are reported at 99 percent specificity, which equates to a false positive rate of one percent. The actual false positive rate may be less than one percent, since cancer incidence rates suggest some of the individuals enrolled in the non-cancer group may have had an undiagnosed cancer at enrollment. Follow-up of participants in CCGA is ongoing, and outcomes will be collected for five years.

The overall detection rate for more than 20 cancer types in the sub-study across all stages was 55 percent (n=784/1,422; 95% confidence interval: 52.5-57.7%). A tissue of origin result across more than 20 cancer types was provided for 94 percent of all cancers detected by GRAIL’s test (n=735/784), and of these, the test correctly identified the tissue of origin in 90 percent of cases (n=663/735).

The overall detection rate for the 12 pre-specified deadly cancer types across all stages was 76 percent (n=671/882; 95% confidence interval: 73-79%). The tissue of origin accuracy for this group of cancers was consistent regardless of stage ranging from 84 to 92 percent.

Additional results for the 12 pre-specified deadly cancer types are detailed below.

Detection Rates (Sensitivity) at Early Stages (Stages I-III) for 12 Deadly Cancer Types at 99 Percent Specificity

Cancer Type (N)	Sensitivity (95% CI)
Lung (151)	59% (51-67%)
Colorectal (72)	74% (62-83%)
Hormone Receptor Negative Breast (67)	64% (52-76%)
Lymphoma^☨ (60)	70% (57-81%)
Pancreatic (41)	78% (62-89%)
Head and Neck (36)	86% (71-95%)
Multiple Myeloma (34)	71% (53-85%)
Ovarian (30)	67% (47-83%)
Esophageal (25)	76% (55-91%)
Liver (25)	68% (46-85%)
Anorectal (14)	79% (49-95%)
Gastric (9)	78% (40-97%)

^☨Excludes leukemias, which are not staged

Detection Rates (Sensitivity) and Tissue of Origin Accuracy by Stage for 12 Deadly Cancer Types at 99 Percent Specificity^☨

Stage	Sensitivity (N) (95% CI)	Tissue of Origin Accuracy* (N)
Stage I	34% (151) (27-43%)	84% (44)
Stage II	77% (171) (70-83%)	91% (124)
Stage III	84% (242) (79-89%)	92% (192)
Stage IV	92% (281) (88-95%)	91% (249)

^☨Excludes leukemias, which are not staged
*Performance in 94% of cases where a tissue of origin result was provided

Tissue of Origin Prediction Across All Stages (Stages I-IV) for 12 Deadly Cancer Types at 99 Percent Specificity*

Cancer Type (Number of Predictions)	Correct Tissue of Origin
Lung (165)	92%
Colorectal (87)	97%
Breast (78)	96%
Lymphoid Neoplasms (107)	89%
Pancreatic (68)	79%
Head and Neck (53)	81%
Multiple Myeloma (23)	96%
Ovarian (25)	96%
Upper Gastrointestinal (Esophageal and Gastric combined) (44)	89%
Liver (29)	72%
Anorectal (3)	67%

*Performance in 94% of cases where a tissue of origin result was provided

Poster Presentation Details

Posters will be available online at https://grail.com/science/publications/ at time of presentation.

Abstract 3049*
Minetta C. Liu, et al. Genome-wide cell-free DNA (cfDNA) methylation signatures and effect on tissue of origin (TOO) performance
Poster Session: June 1, 2019: 8:00-11:00AM CDT, Hall A, Poster Board #41
*Includes data from second CCGA sub-study

Abstract 3103
Darya Filippova, et al. The Circulating Cell-free Genome Atlas (CCGA) study: Size selection of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) fragments
Poster Session: June 1, 2019: 8:00-11:00AM CDT, Hall A, Poster Board #95

Abstract 5574
Allen Cohn, et al. The Circulating Cell-free Genome Atlas (CCGA) study: Follow-up (F/U) on non-cancer participants with cancer-like cell-free DNA signals
Poster Session: June 1, 2019: 1:15-4:15PM CDT, Hall A, Poster Board #397

Abstract 1545
Geoffrey R. Oxnard, et al. Prognostic significance of blood-based cancer detection in plasma cell-free DNA (cfDNA): Evaluating risk of overdiagnosis
Poster Session: June 3, 2019: 1:15-4:15PM CDT, Hall A, Poster Board #39

About CCGA

The Circulating Cell-free Genome Atlas (CCGA) study is a prospective, observational, longitudinal, case-control study that has completed enrollment of approximately 15,000 participants with and without cancer across 142 sites in the United States and Canada. CCGA is designed to characterize the landscape of genomic cancer signals in the blood and to discover, train, and validate GRAIL’s multi-cancer early detection blood test through three pre-planned sub-studies.

About GRAIL’s Investigational Multi-Cancer Early Detection Test

GRAIL is developing a next-generation sequencing (NGS) blood test for the early detection of multiple deadly cancer types. GRAIL’s high efficiency methylation-based technology preferentially targets the most informative regions of the genome and is designed to use its proprietary database and machine-learning algorithms to both detect the presence of cancer and identify the tumor’s tissue of origin. GRAIL’s sequencing database of cancer and non-cancer methylation signatures is believed to be the largest of its kind and covers approximately 30 million methylation sites across the genome. More than 20 cancer types across stages are represented within the database.

DNA methylation is a natural process used by cells to regulate gene expression. It is a chemical modification to DNA and a well-studied epigenomic feature of the genome. In cancer, abnormal methylation patterns and the resulting changes in gene expression can contribute to tumor growth. For example, hypermethylation can cause tumor-suppressor genes to be inactivated.

About GRAIL

GRAIL is a healthcare company whose mission is to detect cancer early, when it can be cured. GRAIL is focused on alleviating the global burden of cancer by developing pioneering technology to detect and identify multiple deadly cancer types early. The company is using the power of next-generation sequencing, population-scale clinical studies, and state-of-the-art computer science and data science to enhance the scientific understanding of cancer biology, and to develop its multi-cancer early detection blood test. GRAIL is located in Menlo Park, California. It is supported by leading global investors and pharmaceutical, technology, and healthcare companies. For more information, please visit www.grail.com.

Contacts
GRAIL
Charlotte Arnold
pr@grail.com

PRESS RELEASE: MTA Launches Public Pilot For OMNY Contactless Fare Payment System – First New Payment System In 25 Years

MTA Headquarters

IMMEDIATE

MTA Launches Public Pilot For OMNY Contactless Fare Payment System – First New Payment System In 25 Years

Sixteen Stations Along Lexington Avenue Line and All MTA Staten Island Buses Now Equipped With OMNY

MetroCard To Remain Until 2023 As MTA Rolls Out to OMNY to Rest Of System by February 2021

OMNY Will Save Customers’ Time and Provide More Payment Choices – Avoiding Lines at MetroCard Vending Machines, Alleviating Crowding, Speeding Buses, And Reducing MTA Costs

The MTA today announced the launch of OMNY, its new contactless fare payment system, allowing riders to pay their fares with digital wallets and contactless credit and debit cards. The public pilot was kicked off at a public event this afternoon at the Bowling Green station in Lower Manhattan.

MTA executives marked the beginning of the gradual rollout of OMNY by joining several students from Transit Tech High School as well as leaders from Cubic Transportation Systems, wich is helping build OMNY, for a demonstration of the new system on the lower mezzanine of the Bowling Green Station.

OMNY is a first-of-its-kind system that lets riders pay their fare and enter the subway or bus by simply tapping contactless credit, debit, and reloadable prepaid cards, mobile phones, smart watches, and other wearable devices. OMNY will eventually provide a seamless payment system across the MTA’s subways, buses, and two commuter railroads.

OMNY is the first transit agency that will launch with an open loop contactless payment system, meaning customers never need to wait in line to buy a fare card. They simply use the device of their choice and seamlessly enter the system. In time, OMNY will allow customers to pay their fares on subways, buses and the two commuter rails using the same payment method.

“Today marks a huge step on a journey to bring our fare payment system into the modern era, allowing for a better customer experience for millions of MTA riders and employees,” said MTA Chairman and CEO Patrick Foye. “The MTA team responsible for getting this critical project off the ground deserves a huge thank you from all New Yorkers. As of today, completion of Phase One of OMNY is on budget, and on schedule.”

“The significance of moving to a modern fare payment system cannot be overstated,” said New York City Transit President Andy Byford. “Eventually, OMNY will help ease congestion in the system, reduce a host of technical challenges associated with the MetroCard, and make our system easier and more intuitive for the tens of millions of New Yorkers and tourists who ride with the MTA each year. I’m eager to continue rolling out this easy-to-use technology to all remaining subway stations and bus routes in the next 18 months.”

“In the more than three decades that I’ve worked here to improve processing customer payments, from tokens to MetroCards, I can truly say that OMNY will be transformative for our customers as well as our organization,” said Alan Putre, OMNY Program Executive. “Our customers can pay for transit the same way they pay for any other products or services now. The technology will allow us to serve our customers in new and better ways, while continuing to provide travel access and support all of our special fare program customers.”

The public pilot phase of the OMNY rollout, which runs through the end of 2019, will allow the MTA to ensure that all systems are fully functional and that any issues are identified and improved upon prior to continuing the rollout of OMNY readers to the rest of the system.

Completion of the entire OMNY project in 2023 will empower customers to choose how, when and where they pay for their fares. OMNY will provide more robust customer service, including a new OMNY app which will provide seamless fare payment between the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North services and subway and bus services, as well as the introduction of the OMNY card to support customers who prefer to fund fares with cash. Eventually, the system will accommodate the migration of all current unlimited ride pass and other special fare products over to the OMNY environment and the option to purchase fare products online or in stations and new machines A closed-loop OMNY card will be sold in stations at a robust network of retail stores beginning in 2021, so cash will always be an option.

During the MTA’s rollout of the OMNY contactless readers and continued expansion of OMNY services between 2019 and 2023, riders can still use MetroCard and eTix.

The public pilot phase of the rollout brings OMNY contactless payments to all Staten Island MTA buses and at all subway station entrances on the lines between Grand Central-42 St and Atlantic Av-Barclays Ctr. Initially, OMNY will support a full-fare, pay-per-ride option until all subway stations and bus routes are equipped with the new technology. Customers have the ability to access their trip history by registering for an OMNY account at omny.info.

“Cubic has enjoyed a long and strong partnership with the MTA and today we’re pleased to see New York taking the first major step towards a fully operational mobile-enabled and contactless fare payment system leveraging our technologies,” said Matt Cole, president of Cubic Transportation Systems. “We’re excited to see New Yorkers begin to use the new technology that will simplify their journeys and make their payment experience seamless.”

All remaining bus routes, subway stations, and Staten Island Railway locations will be equipped by late 2020. OMNY is expected to be enabled for LIRR and Metro-North Railroad by early 2021. Between 2021 and 2023, the MTA will support all remaining fare options, introduce the OMNY Card in retail locations throughout the New York region, and install new vending machines at locations throughout the system.

Only after the OMNY project is fully complete in 2023 will the MTA say goodbye to MetroCard for good. The MetroCard debuted in 1993.

STATEMENTS FROM PAYMENT COMPANIES ACCEPTED AS PART OF OMNY

“Consumers around the world have quickly embraced the speed, convenience and security of tapping to pay. We are excited to be working with the MTA to enable this experience for New Yorkers, helping save valuable time and giving riders an easier way to get where they need to be.”- Dan Sanford, Global Head of Contactless Payments, Visa.

“Whether it’s your vacation or your daily commute, every second counts when you are trying to get around New York City. By partnering with the MTA and Cubic, we are using our payment and security technology to enable tap and go payments and make travel in the city easy, fast and hassle-free.”- Linda Kirkpatrick, Executive Vice President, US Merchants and Acceptance, Mastercard.

“American Express has offered contactless payment capabilities internationally for many years, and we’re thrilled to now work with the New York MTA to enable American Express Card Members to use their contactless-enabled card or digital wallet at the pilot subway stations. As contactless becomes available at more stations and businesses throughout New York, our Card Members will have the speed and convenience of being able to tap-to-pay at transit turnstiles and beyond.”- Jaromir Divilek, Executive Vice President, Global Network Operations, American Express.

“We’re proud Apple Pay is helping make New Yorkers’ daily commutes a little easier starting today. Once a customer sets up a payment card in Apple Wallet to use for Express Transit, they can simply tap their iPhone and Apple Watch on the reader to quickly go through the turnstile and ride the subway or board the bus.”- Jennifer Bailey, vice president of Internet Services, Apple.

“When Discover’s contactless technology is implemented, it will make it easier and faster for commuters in New York City to pay for rides and access public transportation. We’re looking forward to helping cities incorporate contactless payments into their mass transit systems with the goal of providing more seamless commuter experiences for their riders.”- Ricardo Leite, vice president of global products and partnerships at Discover.

“We want to make commuting simpler for everyone and we’re working with the MTA to enable Google Pay for NYC transit. Now, you can seamlessly tap and pay with your phones and save valuable time — and you can do this easily without even having to open the app or unlock your device. Additionally, in the next few weeks, Google Maps will let you see which routes accept Google Pay when you look up directions.” — Prakash Hariramani, Director, Google Pay.

“Samsung Pay provides access to great deals, earn rewards, and use of your mobile device to pay practically anywhere you can swipe a card. Now, we are continuing the evolution by bringing even more benefits to consumers. We are excited to help bring mobile innovation to New York City Transit commuters by delivering speed, convenience, and security to millions of daily commuters who use Samsung Pay.” – Sang Ahn, Vice President and General Manager for Samsung Pay.

“We’re excited to work with the MTA, one of the most recognized transit systems in the world, to empower consumers in New York City to easily tap to pay for subway transit from their wrist. We’ve always been about helping users be healthier, but we also continue to build on the overall utility of our platform to promote an active lifestyle. With that, we currently support open and closed loop transit systems around the globe, so we can provide valuable convenience, like effortlessly using a Fitbit smartwatch or tracker to pay for the subway, so users can go about their day and focus on what’s most important to them.”- James Park, CEO and Co-Founder of Fitbit.

ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND INFORMATION ABOUT MTA FARE PAYMENTS AND TODAY’S EVENT

The MetroCard was first tested in the system in 1993, debuting to the larger public in January 1994. All MetroCard turnstiles were installed by May 1997 and all buses began accepting it by the end of 1995. Tokens were sold until April 2003 and were discontinued that May.
OMNY readers accept contactless cards from Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and eventually Discover Card as well as Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay and Fitbit.
Transit Technical High School offers the city’s only vocational program that prepares high school students for careers at MTA New York City Transit. Students learn career and technical skills specifically aimed at getting them ready for NYC Transit careers. Many immediately enter apprenticeship programs at New York City Transit. More info about Transit Tech and the MTA’s longstanding relationship is available here.
Cubic Transportation Systems has been a partner with the MTA in helping develop the technology since the very beginning of the process and also helped develop MetroCard. Since the introduction of the MetroCard system, Cubic has continued to support the MTA through various projects, including the introduction of the Select Bus Service, Second Avenue subway, line extension, creation of the Barclays Center transit hub, South Ferry Terminal, Tompkinsville Station, Fulton Street Transit Center, Westchester Bee-Line and recovery from Superstorm Sandy, among many others.

NEWS: INVESTIGATIVE SUMMARY: Findings of Misconduct by an Assistant U.S. Attorney for Possessing, Transporting, and Consuming Marijuana Edibles; Falsely Denying Controlled Substance Use on a Security Form; and Lack of Candor

INVESTIGATIVE SUMMARY: Findings of Misconduct by an Assistant U.S. Attorney for Possessing, Transporting, and Consuming Marijuana Edibles; Falsely Denying Controlled Substance Use on a Security Form; and Lack of Candor.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) initiated an investigation of an Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) based on that attorney’s self-report to the OIG that the AUSA had possessed, transported, and consumed marijuana edibles in August or September 2016 in an attempt to alleviate back pain.

The AUSA further stated that during a marital dispute, the AUSA’s spouse had threatened to call DOJ to report the AUSA because the spouse assumed that the AUSA had not disclosed the AUSA’s medicinal marijuana use on the Standard Form (SF) 86 (Questionnaire for National Security Positions) form. The AUSA additionally stated that in the SF-86 form that the AUSA submitted in February 2017 the AUSA had incorrectly denied using a controlled substance in the past seven years.

The OIG substantiated and the AUSA admitted to the OIG possessing, transporting, and consuming marijuana edibles in violation of federal and state law. The AUSA further admitted to the OIG incorrectly denying having used a controlled substance in the past seven years on the SF-86 form that the AUSA submitted approximately six months after consuming the marijuana edibles.

The OIG concluded that the AUSA had violated federal and state criminal law in possessing, transporting, and consuming the marijuana edibles, and that the AUSA had violated 18 U.S.C. § 1001 when the AUSA falsely denied on an SF-86, submitted in February 2017, that the AUSA had not used controlled substances in the past seven years.

The OIG also concluded that the AUSA had lacked candor in an interview with the OIG when the AUSA claimed that the incorrect responses on the SF-86 were inadvertent. Criminal prosecution by federal and state authorities was declined.

The OIG has completed its investigation and has provided its report to EOUSA and the Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility for action they deem appropriate.

PRESS RELEASE: Materia Collective is excited to release EXILE: A Tribute to Supergiant Games

SEATTLE – May 31, 2019 – Materia Collective is excited to release EXILE: A Tribute to Supergiant Games, a super giant cover album with 49 tracks across a multitude of genres and including several game industry guest talents. Featuring the music of Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre, all composed by Darren Korb and tied together by the unifying theme of protagonists who are outcasts, EXILE touches on everything from big band, acapella, cosmic space rock, ’90s grunge, string quartets, brass quintets, hard rock and a number of fantastic choir arrangements. Featured talents include the Videri String Quartet, composers Stemage (Steven Universe, Bubsy: Paws on Fire!) and John Robert Matz (For the King, Fossil Echo), and many others. The album is licensed and available wherever digital music is sold:

EXILE: A Tribute to Supergiant Games on all Storefronts

“The videogame community has a lot of love for Supergiant Games, and not without good cause,” comment album producers Brian Diamond and Stephen Robert Froeber. “The genres and gameplay of their games run the gamut and we wanted to reflect the diversity of those styles in our musical tribute to the original material.

Nearly 50 arrangers and over 120 collaborators have converged to show their love for the games. We hope everyone enjoys listening as much as we enjoyed creating it.”

Some of the album highlights include: a stunning choral rendition of “Mother, I’m here” from Bastion, a gorgeous and visceral cover of “We All Become” from Transistor in the form of 90s grunge and hard rock a la Garbage, and the virtuosic live ensemble performance of “Path to Glory” from Pyre by the Videri String Quartet.

Learn more about EXILE: A Tribute to Supergiant Games:

https://www.materiacollective.com/music/exile-tribute-to-supergiant-games

About Materia Collective

Materia Collective is a Seattle-based videogame music publisher and label, representing an international array of renowned video game musicians, composers, and songwriters. The collective supports its members with the financial, legal, logistical, and creative aspects of bringing videogame music into the forefront. The company has become known within the industry as a representation of highly innovative game music endeavors that move and inspire.

Learn more: https://www.materiacollective.com

Follow Materia Collective on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and SoundCloud

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Producers Brian Diamond and Stephen Robert Froeber are available for interview.

A press kit containing the album for review is available upon request.

Media Contact

Jayson Napolitano, Scarlet Moon Promotions

jayson@scarletmoonpromotions.com

PRESS RELEASE: California Man Sentenced to 14 Years in Prison for Sexually Exploiting a Minor He Met While Playing “Clash Of Clans”

Department of Justice

Office of Public Affairs

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Friday, May 31, 2019

California Man Sentenced to 14 Years in Prison for Sexually Exploiting a Minor He Met While Playing “Clash Of Clans”

A Fresno, California, man was sentenced today to 14 years in prison followed by seven years of supervised release for using the internet to coerce and entice a minor into producing child pornography.

Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney G. Zachary Terwilliger of the Eastern District of Virginia and Acting Assistant Director in Charge John P. Selleck of the FBI’s Washington Field Office made the announcement.

Emilio Morales, 29, was sentenced today before U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady. According to admissions made in connection with his guilty plea, Morales met the 11-year-old victim while playing the online game “Clash of Clans.” In 2017, Morales began grooming the victim over Clash of Clans before proposing that he and the victim communicate privately over the online chatting application Kik Messenger. While communicating over Kik Messenger, Morales coerced and persuaded the victim to produce and send him sexually explicit images and videos. The conduct ceased when, despite Morales’s attempts at manipulation, the minor victim refused to participate in any further sexual activity.

The case was investigated by the FBI Washington Field Office’s Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force and the Prince William County Police Department, with substantial assistance from the High Technology Investigative Unit of the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS). The case was prosecuted by CEOS Trial Attorney Kyle P. Reynolds and Assistant U.S. Attorney Whitney D. Russell of the Eastern District of Virginia.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and CEOS, 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 to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.

Press Release: U.S. Attorney’s Office Promotes Elder Justice Initiative with Live Interactive Telephone Town Hall

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Thursday, May 30, 2019

U.S. Attorney’s Office Promotes Elder Justice Initiative with Live Interactive Telephone Town Hall

GREENSBORO, N.C. — The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of North Carolina is promoting the Department of Justice’s Elder Justice Initiative throughout the Piedmont Triad area, announced U.S. Attorney Matthew G.T. Martin. On May 28, 2019, the Middle District partnered with the FBI and the AARP to conduct outreach and raise awareness to educate older adults about the latest scams so they do not fall victim. More than 4000 seniors in North Carolina dialed in to an interactive telephone town hall to learn about the latest financial scams. A recording of the town hall is available online here.

Scammers are targeting seniors at an alarming rate. Across the country, victims of all ages lost $2.71 billion dollars to fraud in 2018, according to statistics collected by the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center. Victims over the age of 60 account for $649,227,724 of those losses. According to the same statistics, in North Carolina, more than 7,500 people lost more than $137 million dollars.

The DOJ Elder Justice Initiative aims to combat elder financial exploitation by expanding efforts to investigate and prosecute financial scams that target seniors; educating older adults on how to identify scams and avoid getting ripped off by scammers; and promoting greater coordination with law enforcement partners.

Some examples of financial fraud targeting seniors discussed during the seminar are:

Lottery phone scams – in which the callers convince seniors that a large fee or taxes must be paid before they can receive lottery winnings.
Grandparent scams – which convince seniors that their grandchildren are in trouble and need money to make rent, repair a car, or even money for bail.
Romance scams – which lull victims to believe that their online paramour needs funds for a U.S. visit or some other purpose.
IRS imposter scams – which defraud victims by posing as IRS agents and claiming that victims owe back taxes.
Sham business opportunities – which convince victims to invest in lucrative business opportunities or investments.

Below are some tips shared with participants during the seminar on how to avoid falling victim to a financial scam:

Don’t share personal information with anyone you don’t know.
Don’t pay a fee for a prize or lottery winning.
Don’t click on pop-up ads or messages.
Delete phishing emails and ignore harassing phone calls.
Don’t send gift cards, checks, money orders, wire money, or give your bank

account information to a stranger.
Don’t fall for a high-pressure sales pitch or a lucrative business deal.
If a scammer approaches you, take the time to talk to a friend or family member.
Keep in mind that if you send money once, you’ll be a target for life.
Remember, it’s not rude to say, “NO.”
A good rule of thumb is, if it sounds too good to be true, it’s likely a scam.

In March of this year, Attorney General William P. Barr and multiple law enforcement partners, including the FBI, announced the largest coordinated sweep of elder fraud cases in history. The Department took action in every federal district across the country, through the filing of criminal or civil cases. The cases brought during this sweep involved more than 260 defendants from around the globe who victimized more than two million Americans, most of them older adults. As part of the sweep, the Middle District of North Carolina charged, and obtained the guilty plea of, a woman who embezzled around $370,000 from an older person for whom she was a caretaker, using the money to pay for spa treatments, travel, college tuition, dining, and expensive shopping sprees. She will be sentenced in July 2019.

In another matter, Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Chut secured the conviction of a woman who obtained credit card numbers and personal information from older residents of Davidson County, by calling victims and pretending to be calling from a hospital or pharmacy. The defendant was sentenced to fourteen months imprisonment, and was ordered to pay restitution to her victims for the more than $69,000 that she obtained through her scheme.

Attacking exploitation and fighting fraud are two priorities of the Middle District, and the U.S. Attorney’s office is committed to aggressively pursuing individuals who engage in such acts.

Elder abuse includes physical abuse, caregiver neglect, financial exploitation, psychological abuse, sexual abuse, and abandonment. Elder fraud complaints may be filed with the FTC at www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov or at 877-FTC-HELP. You can also contact the Victim Connect Hotline between 9am-6pm, Monday through Friday, at: 1- 855-4VICTIM (1-855-4842846), or email the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of North Carolina at USANCM.CivilRights@usdoj.gov.

For more information about the Elder Justice Initiative, please visit: https://www.justice.gov/elderjustice.

Press Release: Department of Justice U.S. Attorney’s Office Western District of North Carolina

Department of Justice

U.S. Attorney’s Office

Western District of North Carolina

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Thursday, May 30, 2019

Phone Provider Found Guilty For Role In $11 Million International Telemarketing Scheme

Educational Seminar on How to Avoid Getting Scammed Is Scheduled for June 10, 2019, at 10:00 a.m. at the Tyvola Senior Center in Charlotte

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – An Ohio man was found guilty late yesterday for his role in a $7 million telemarketing scheme that defrauded primarily elderly victims in the United States from call centers in Costa Rica.

Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney R. Andrew Murray of the Western District of North Carolina, Inspector in Charge David M. McGinnis of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service’s Charlotte Divison, Acting Special Agent in Charge William Cheung of the IRS Criminal Investigation’s (CI) Cincinnati Field Office, Special Agent in Charge Matthew D. Line of the IRS CI Charlotte Field Office and Special Agent in Charge John Strong of the FBI’s Charlotte Field Office made the announcement.

Following a five-day jury trial, Donald Dodt, 76, originally of Cleveland, Ohio, was convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and mail fraud, two counts of mail fraud, eight counts of wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit international money laundering and 10 counts of international money laundering.

According to evidence presented at trial, Dodt worked in a call center in Costa Rica in which co-conspirators, who posed as representatives of the District of Columbia Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs and federal agencies, including the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, and who also posed as federal judges, contacted victims in the United States — primarily senior citizens – to tell them that that they had supposedly won a substantial “sweepstakes” prize. After convincing victims that they stood to receive a significant financial reward, the co-conspirators told victims that they needed to make a series of up-front cash payments before collecting, purportedly for items like insurance fees, taxes and import fees. Co-conspirators used a variety of means to conceal their true identity, such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services provided by Dodt that made it appear that they were calling from Washington, D.C., and other places in the United States.

As the evidence presented at trial illustrated, Dodt was an integral part of this scheme in that he knowingly provided services that were necessary for the scheme to operate and that facilitated the concealment and, ultimately, success of the scheme for many years. Specifically, Dodt provided and maintained VoIP phone technology and assigned phone numbers associated with locations in the United States through which members of the conspiracy were able to make the fraudulent calls to victims in the United States and conceal their identities and location. Dodt specifically assigned virtual phone numbers with area codes associated with Washington, D.C., to make it appear that the calls originated from within the United States and that also bolstered conspirators’ misrepresentations that they were representatives of government agencies located in Washington. Dodt also warned the co-conspirators if certain numbers were “hot” – i.e., there were customer complaints or law enforcement inquiries – and replaced those phone numbers with new phone numbers that the co-conspirators then used in furtherance of the scheme, the evidence showed.

Dodt and his conspirators stole more than $7 million from victims, the evidence showed.

This case was investigated by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation and the FBI with assistance from the Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations. The case is being prosecuted by Fraud Section Trial Attorneys William Bowne, Jennifer Farer and Philip Trout. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of North Carolina provided substantial assistance with this matter.

The Western District’s Elder Justice Initiative

In March 2019, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI in North Carolina announced the Western District’s Elder Justice Initiative, which aims to combat elder financial exploitation by expanding efforts to investigate and prosecute financial scams that target seniors; educate older adults on how to identify scams and avoid getting ripped off by scammers; and promote greater coordination with law enforcement partners.

In addition to the criminal prosecution of perpetrators, the Elder Justice Initiative aims to raise awareness through outreach, including a series of seminars to educate older adults and prevent victimization. Our next such seminar is scheduled for June 10, 2019, at 10:00 a.m. at the Tyvola Senior Center. This seminar is free of charge.

Among the topics covered will be financial fraud and scams targeting seniors, including:

Lottery phone scams – in which the callers convince seniors that a large fee or taxes must be paid before they can receive lottery winnings.
Grandparent scams – which convince seniors that their grandchildren are in trouble and need money to make rent, repair a car, or even money for bail.
Romance scams – which lull victims to believe that their online paramour needs funds for a U.S. visit or some other purpose.
IRS imposter scams – which defraud victims by posing as IRS agents and claiming that victims owe back taxes.
Sham business opportunities – which convince victims to invest in lucrative business opportunities or investments.

The seminar will also focus on prevention and how to avoid falling victim to a financial scam. Some of such tips on preventing becoming a victim of fraud are:

Don’t share personal information with anyone you don’t know.
Don’t pay a fee for a prize or lottery winning.
Don’t click on pop-up ads or messages.
Delete phishing emails and ignore harassing phone calls.
Don’t send gift cards, checks, money orders, wire money, or give your bank account information to a stranger.
Don’t fall for a high-pressure sales pitch or a lucrative business deal.
If a scammer approaches you, take the time to talk to a friend or family member.
Keep in mind that if you send money once, you’ll be a target for life.
Remember, it’s not rude to say, “NO.”
A good rule of thumb is, if it’s too good to be true, it’s likely a scam.

For more information about the Elder Justice Initiative, please visit: https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdnc/elder-justice-initiative. To view our Public Service Announcement, please visit: https://youtu.be/qBGGAA7Mxbo

IPCPR 2020 New Show Dates Announced: Cigars & Pipe

Date Changes for IPCPR 2020

[Washington, DC, May 21, 2019] The International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association (IPCPR) is pleased to announce new dates for the 2020 trade show. The 88th Annual Convention and International Trade Show will take place Friday, July 10 – Tuesday, July 14, 2020. Educational sessions and Opening Party will take place Friday, July 10.

This date change moves the trade show back to the second week of July, as it has historically been held for the past several years.

“We are very happy we’ve been able to negotiate new dates with the Sands,” said Scott Pearce, IPCPR executive director. “While it was necessary for us to hold the event earlier this year in order to get the show back to the Sands, we heard loud and clear that the timing was not the best for our attendees. We are fortunate we have such a great partner in the Sands to allow us to make this change.”

Scott Regina, chair of the IPCPR Trade Show Committee, remarked that this continuity with the Sands and the dates will hopefully build more excitement around the annual show. “Our goal is to continuously work on building a better show experience and we believe that being able to move the dates will translate into a more successful event for everyone,” Regina said.

Move In

Education and Opening Party

Trade Show

Move Out (breakdown begins immediately following conclusion of the show on July 14)

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About IPCPR

Founded in 1933, the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association (IPCPR) is the oldest, largest and most active trade association representing and assisting retailers, manufacturers and suppliers of premium tobacco products. IPCPR is a not-for-profit trade association and is recognized as the “Voice of Authority and Reason” on premium tobacco related issues.

Grace for the Cure: Diabetes Alert Service Dog for Gracie Sevilla – www.GracieSevilla.com

Hi:

In March 2018, our 4 year old daughter, Gracie Sevilla (now 5), was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, an incurable, intense, auto-immune disease that inflicts mostly children in their grade school years; a disease whose cause is unknown and is not due to diet or family history, but rather genetic markers and environmental triggers which cause the Pancreas to no longer produce life saving Insulin (a hormone in the body) necessary for blood glucose production and functioning – both high and low levels of blood glucose cause diabetic ketoacidosis which leads to diabetic coma, swelling in the brain and then, death.

Our campaign goal for her is a Diabetes Alert Service Dog; a specially trained service animal that has the ability to quickly detect changes in her blood that could be life threatening. The dog then alerts the person with Diabetes and those around her, allowing time for treatment of both highs and lows.

We don’t currently have a dog and it makes perfect sense for our family pet to be specially trained to alert us of Gracie’s life-threatening highs and lows.

You can read about Gracie, Type 1 Diabetes, and how it has impacted our family in a recent article on her by Insulin Nation and also a more recent feature story in Inland Empire Sports & News .

Kendall Simmons, an all-time Pittsburgh Steelers great, recently tweeted out to Gracie as being an inspiration to all with Type 1 Diabetes.

Gracie was also featured with her Ohio State Buckeyes Under Armour Flag Football League on Channel 2 & 9 news – Los Angeles – for not only being the youngest in the league, the only girl for that matter, but also the only Type 1 Diabetic in the league; wearing her Dexcom G6 under her shorts and on her thigh as she played.

You can read about her here .

Type 1 Diabetes, not to be confused with adult onset Type 2 Diabetes, requires moment by moment, day to day treatment and left untreated, can be immediately fatal. Persons with Type 1 Diabetes require Insulin injections after every meal; especially those which contain carbohydrates, as well as finger pricks to check blood glucose levels. Continuous Glucose Monitoring Devices (CGM’s) lessen the need for finger pricks.

Gracie receives multiple injections of Insulin daily after every meal and snack and one night time dose of a different type of Insulin (Lantus) which is long acting; periodic finger pricks and now wears a Dexcom G6 continuous glucose monitoring system that has a filament like catheter that inserts under the skin; continuously testing glucose levels and that which transmits a reading to our phones every 5 minutes and sounds alarms alerting us of dangerous highs and lows so that we may treat her high and low symptoms with Insulin or carbohydrate fluids or foods.

The Dexcom g6 is an absolute blessing for us and a literal life-saver. Gracie’s mother, Melodie, fought with her Pediatrician and our insurance company to get the “non-essential” medical device which even with insurance, is extremely expensive (each sensor cost several hundred dollars and needs to be switched out every 10 days or sooner and the transmitter or “brain” is 3 times as expensive and also last a relatively short period of time). These components often fail well before their expiration and long waits and troubleshooting sessions with tech support; fights with the pharmacies and insurance companies, much less the Pediatrician, are common.

DIABETIC ALERT DOG: Although the continuous glucose monitoring device (Dexcom G6) is essential to us (can’t imagine not having it after having had it), man-made technology fails and there is something much more reliable and would be such an amazing blessing to the entire family, especially little Gracie, who loves animals.

We don’t currently have a dog and a well-trained Diabetic Alert Dog makes all the sense in the world.

Properly trained, certified Diabetic Alert Dogs can alert of a life-threatening, impending high or low blood glucose level as much as 15 minutes sooner than a medical device and even a finger prick. God has designed these dogs with such an amazing keen seen of smell; instinct and loyalty for it’s owners that the dog will wake up or otherwise alert a sleeping parent or child to let them know that the blood glucose levels are rising dangerously fast or dropping dangerously low; such a loveable and reliable medical alert system to help strengthen what we already have and provide for just a little bit of peace of mind in the midst of what is a constant stressor and source of great anxiety.

Gracie’s dad is a great provider for his family but in considering this newly learned option (Diabetic Alert Dog); factoring in our family’s gifts and talents and our no choice other than to accept this disease and meet it head on, we’ve decided to take this route to help raise not only funds to purchase a specially trained dog from a reputable and certified Diabetic Alert Dog organization, but also to raise awareness about this horrible disease; something we are committed to doing for the rest of our lives.

Diabetes Alert Service Dogs from reputable, certified, licensed trainers cost in the tens of thousands of dollars and most insurance companies do not cover the costs of diabetic alert dogs or service dogs in general, because their effectiveness has not yet been proven in scientific studies. Therefore, for the reasons stated above and for this reason, we invite you to join little Gracie in our “Grace for the Cure” fundraiser for a Diabetic Alert Dog for Gracie, and to raise T1D (Type 1 Diabetes) awareness.

We believe that God can instantly heal Gracie and all who suffer and pray earnestly that He will. However, we know that in this life we shall suffer and take the good with the bad, praising Him unceasingly and remaining steadfast in our faith in Him. In the meantime, and in the midst of this fiery trial, He has been ever faithful and has blessed us in so many ways. It is our prayer that all who suffer and deal daily with this terrible disease will receive healing soon and that God will bless us all with a cure, and continue to fill us with His grace and mercy.

Until there is a cure for Type 1 Diabetes, there is Gracie, and if God wills, she shall have her furry companion soon enough while raising awareness, as we’ve learned so many no nothing, very little or are very misinformed about a very serious and life-threatening disease.

Grace for the Cure!

Our Amazing Grace!

https://www.gofundme.com/diabetic-alert-dog-for-gracie-grace-for-the-cure

www.GracieSevilla.com

www.GracefortheCure.org

www.GracieT1dSuperStar.org

Gracie with her mom (Melodie) and older brother Luke, walking for a Diabetes Cure at the JDRF One Walk event at Anaheim Stadium this year.

Family and friends supporting Gracie and Team: GRACE FOR THE CURE!

Gracie Sevilla, Type 1 Diabetic

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Football: Riverside’s Under Armour K-2 Division Steelers Features the Amazing Gracie Sevilla – www.iesportsnews.com

Football: Riverside’s Under Armour K-2 Division Steelers Features the Amazing Gracie Sevilla

11 Apr, 2019 in Community / Football / Local / News / Sports by Charles McKee

Read the Article here: https://iesportsnews.com/football-riversides-under-armour-k-2-division-steelers-features-the-amazing-gracie-sevilla/

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Riverside Under Armour – Under the Lights Football: Gracie Sevilla & The Steelers – Type 1 Diabetes

Riverside Under Armour – Under the Lights Football Team: Gracie Sevilla – Type 1 Diabetic

April 9, 2019

Riverside Under Armour – Under the Lights: K-2 Division Steelers and Gracie Sevilla – Type 1 Diabetic Football Player

For Immediate Release

On Friday, April 12, 2019, the Riverside Under Armour – Under the Lights K-2 Flag Football Team – the Steelers (3-0), will be playing a double-header against the also undefeated Raiders, then against the 1-2 Rams. The game against the Raiders is a league showcase game that pits two dynamic offenses and lock down defenses against one another for first place in the league and the inside track to play in the National Championship Game at UCLA in May.

The Riverside Steelers recently beat the Menifee Raiders by a score 20-8 with Riverside Quarterback, Luke Sevilla, recording an epic game with 3 interceptions at Safety; one was a pick 6.

Luke also was 5/6 passing with a touchdown pass and had many long gains at running back.

Guillermo Villarreal, had a strong game on defense with 6 stops.

Last week, the Steelers fell behind two (2) scores against the Riverside Seahawks, until Luke Sevilla, playing running back and safety, accounted for 3 touchdowns to bring the team to an 18-13 victory.

The Steelers team features 5 returning members from last years Championship game squad: Luke Sevilla, Gracie Sevilla, Jayden Sage, Guillermo Villarreal, & Noah Corona.

The Steelers have added 3 dynamic players to their mix this year: Sese Tuolioa, Eden Esau and Zane Sedoris – increasing their speed and skill exponentially.

Sese Tuolioa, is the 6 year-old brother of Lokeni and Leni Tuolioa; starting linebackers for the UCLA Bruins, and Lemusu Toailoa; starting Linebacker for the Sacramento State Hornets.

The UCLA tandem helped out at practice; bringing their friends and teammates, and were on the sidelines helping Head Coach, Tommy Sevilla at the Menifee showcase game.

Unique to the Riverside Under the Lights Flag Football League is Receiver, Running Back and Defensive End, Gracie Sevilla, the only girl in the league, the youngest player in the league (5) and a Type 1 Diabetic, recently diagnosed last year.

Type 1 Diabetes is an incurable auto-immune disease that affects mostly children from 4 years old and rarely strikes adults. Type 1 Diabetes is thought to be triggered by viruses/illnesses common to school aged children (RotoVirus, Foot and Mouth, etc) who have the genetic markers of Type 1 Diabetes, which causes the Pancreas to fight against its own beta cells and shut down partially, then entirely, rendering the Pancreas useless to produce life saving Insulin.

Gracie, literally needs Insulin Shots to stay alive and receives as many as 10 per day.

The device is a Dexcom G6 and her father, Tommy Sevilla, the teams head coach of two years, keeps the receiver in his pocket as he coaches the kids; including Gracie, on the playing field.

Gracie was recently featured in Insulin Nation and on Channel 2 & 9 news – Los Angeles affiliates, regarding her Type 1 Diabetes and athletic prowess; Gracie also excels in Baseball, Soccer and Basketball. She currently stars for the Jurupa Valley Single A – Angels Baseball Team as an infielder and power hitter.

As a soccer player, Gracie was the leading scorer on her Riverside Parks & Recreation team and, as a Basketball Player, she recently made a long shot from the baseline area of the adult basketball court in a Parks & Recreation game at Reid Park.

Gracie Sevilla has a website in development: https://GracieSevilla.com , which links to her GoFundMe page where she is raising Type 1 Diabetes awareness and also money for a Diabetic Alert Dog.

Grace for the Cure, is the name of the organization founded by Gracie’s dad, to bring awareness to Type 1 Diabetes.

#GracefortheCure

Diabetic Alert Dogs are specially trained dogs that alert the affected person and those around them of impending highs and lows, a full 15 minutes before a CGM like the Dexcom G6 or other man-made technologies, and can even sense and alert from many miles away when they are away from their owners; such as when Gracie is in school.

Friday night double-header will be played at Riverside’s Arlington High School at 6:00 pm (Raiders) and 8:00 pm (Seahawks).

For inquiries, please contact:

Tommy Sevilla (951) 289-1710
Head Coach, Under Armour Steelers

https://sevillalocalmedia.com

Sevilla Local Media – Grace for the Cure #graceforthecure

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DIGNITY CIGARS: Eric Dickerson Golf Tournament

April 10, 2019

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Dignity Cigars to sponsor Eric Dickerson’s 2019 Hall of Fame Annual Charity Golf Invitational!

WHEN:

April 28-29, 2019

WHERE:

The Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks, CA will be graced with Dignity.

WHY:

Dignity Cigars is proud to be a sponsor of this event which brings men and women of various ethnicities together in efforts to solve a growing problem that plagues various communities, the problem of fatherless boys.

In support of Young Warriors, a 501c3 organization that guides and inspires fatherless boys how to become great men!

Don’Juan of Dignity Cigars says: “The spirit of this event keeps you coming back.” I like to call it. “An invitational that could change the world.”

The opening night Private VIP party will be star-studded event. Stories will dance around the room, new friendships will be formed.

People whom share with each other begin to understand each other’s journey through life. which in turn, opens a world of possibilities.

Next morning, the golf invitational gets underway.

Participants tee off in the spirit of harmony. For this is not a competition, It’s a gathering of great spirits with hearts of gold working together to champion a solution to fatherless boys, by way of guiding and mentoring young boys to one day be great men.

Growing up, we were taught, everything happens for reason. Every failure we experience is nothing more than the seed to an equivalent success.

The universe is kind! All we ask of it shall be granted, if we truly believe that we can achieve.

For more information, contact Jason Hill at YWinfo@youngwarriors.org

For more info on Dignity Cigars, visit www.digntycigars.com or contact: donjuan@dignitycigars.com

Riverside Under Armour Steelers Travel to Menifee: Luke & Gracie Sevilla

March 28, 2019

Riverside Under Armour Under the Lights Flag Football K-2 Steelers Travel to Menifee

For Immediate Release

On Friday, March 29, 2019, the Riverside Under Armour K-2 Flag Football Team – the Steelers (1-0), will be traveling to Paloma Valley High School in Menifee to challenge the 2-0 Menifee Steelers, in a showcase game between the two leagues.

The 1-0 Riverside Under Armour K-2 Raiders, will also be challenging a Menifee league team on Friday night.

The Steelers team features 5 returning members from last years Championship game squad: Luke Sevilla, Gracie Sevilla, Jayden Sage, Guillermo Villareal, & Noah Corona.

The Steelers have added 3 dynamic players to their mix this year: Sese Tuolioa, Eden Esau and Zane Sedoris – increasing their speed and skill exponentially.

Sese Tuolia, is the 6 year-old brother of Lokeni and Leni Tuolia; starting linebackers for the UCLA Bruins, and Lemusu Toailoa; starting Linebacker for the Sacramento State Hornets.

The UCLA tandem helps out at practices brings their friends and teammates and will be in attendance for Friday nights game in Menifee.

Gracie, whose blood glucose levels have dipped to deadly levels (32 mg/dl) or has risen to deadly levels (600 + mg/dl), plays with a continuous glucose monitoring device affixed to her thigh that sends a reading to her dad, mom and school teachers & nurses (River Springs Magnolia Center in Riverside, where sister Sophia is a member of the Varsity Swim Team) cell phone app, alerting them of both highs and lows. The device is a Dexcom G6 and her father, Tommy Sevilla, the teams head coach of two years, keeps the receiver in his pocket as he coaches the kids; including Gracie, on the playing field.

Gracie’s father, Tommy, is a member of the Jurupa Valley Boxing Club’s Board of Directors; Gracie has a desire to add boxing to her resume of athletics; a sport that her 7 year old brother and football teammate, Luke, will be taking up as he soon reaches the required age of 8.

Gracie Sevilla has a website in development: https://GracieSevilla.com

which links to her GoFundMe page where she is raising Type 1 Diabetes awareness and also money for a Diabetic Alert Dog.

Diabetic Alert Dogs are specially trained dogs that alert the affected persona those around them of impending highs and lows, a full 15 minutes before a CGM like the Dexcom G6 or other man-made technologies, and can even sense these phenomenons miles away when they are away from their owners; such as when Gracie is in school.

The Riverside Under Armour K-2 Steelers will return to their home stadium – Riverside’s Arlington High School, Friday, April 5th at 5:30 pm, and every friday night thereafter, as they play to reach the Under Armour National Championship Game to be played at UCLA.

For inquiries, please contact:

Tommy Sevilla (951) 289-1710

UPDATE: The Riverside Steelers beat the Menifee Raiders by a score 20-8 with Riverside Quarterback, Luke Sevilla, the older brother of Gracie Sevilla, recordig an epic game with 3 interceptions at Safety; one was a pick 6. Luke also was 5/6 passing with a touchdown pass and had many long gains at running back.

Guillermo Villareal, had a strong game on defense with 6 stops.

The Riverside Steelers played exceptionally well alongside the Riverside Steelers who also won their game against Menifee.

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Michigan Defendant Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy to Defraud the IRS and Steal From an Organization Receiving Federal Funds

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National Indian Gaming Association Chairman Ernie Stevens, Jr., issues a statement as the House passes bill condemning President Donald Trump’s divisive comments

About the National Indian Gaming Association

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SEO Services United States – Internet Marketing – SEM – Social Media – PPC – Website Development – Website Optimization

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CFPB To Hold First Symposium On June 25

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South Carolina Man Sentenced for Attempting to Provide Material Support to ISIS

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Former Owners of T-Mobile Retail Store Arrested on Federal Charges Alleging $25 Million Scheme to Illicitly Unlock Cell Phones

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Former Colorado Springs Sheriff’s Deputy Sentenced to Nine Years in Prison for Receiving and Possessing Child Pornography

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Former pro baseball player sentenced to federal prison in Operation Vanilla Gorilla

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Owners of Los Angeles Home Health Agency Sentenced to Prison for Role in Health Care Fraud that Defrauded Medicare

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Nearly 1,700 Suspected Child Sex Predators Arrested During Operation “Broken Heart”

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