Fourteen defendants — including San Fernando Valley and Glendale residents — were arrested May 28, on two federal criminal complaints alleging they fraudulently obtained more than $25 million in taxpayer-funded COVID-19 relief funds and federally-guaranteed small business loans.
Ralph Olarte, 55, of Glendale, the CFO of Sport LA Inc., was arrested May 27 at Los Angeles International Airport. He made his initial appearance and was arraigned May 28 in United States District Court in downtown Los Angeles.
Organizational realignments will help ICE achieve President Trump and the American people’s mandate of arresting and deporting criminal illegal aliens and making American communities safe.
The charges against Elvis Harizaj, 25, of Cherry Hill, and Natasha Flores, 27, of Newark, were announced May 28 by the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey in Camden.
The shipment, which originated in China and was destined for the Sinaloa Drug Cartel in Mexico, was identified as a result of an initiative launched by ICE in 2019 that leverages the agency’s extensive expertise in illicit cross-border trade and sophisticated analytical tools and techniques to identify suspicious shipments of chemical precursors from China, India and other source countries that are destined for the drug cartels in Mexico.
When I transitioned to private practice after government service — most recently as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia — I learned there are more similarities between the two jobs than many realize, with both disciplines requiring resourcefulness, zealous advocacy and foresight, says Zach Terwilliger at V&E.