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(NEW YORK) — There are so many victims of the fraud allegedly perpetrated by FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried federal prosecutors said it would be impractical for them to individually notify all of them. So, late Friday, the judge overseeing the case authorized an alternative method.
Judge Lewis Kaplan allowed prosecutors to establish a website to inform alleged victims of their rights and of the schedule of proceedings in the case.
“If you believe that you may have been a victim of fraud by Samuel Bankman-Fried, AKA “SBF,” please contact the victim/witness coordinator at the United States Attorney’s office,” the website said.
The number of FTX investors and customers who prosecutors have said collectively lost $8 billion is likely to exceed 1 million. Federal law requires prosecutors to contact possible crime victims.
Bankman-Fried was charged last month in an eight-count indictment with defrauding customers of and lenders to the now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX. He was also charged with defrauding lenders to his privately-controlled hedge fund Alameda Research.
Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty earlier this week to wire fraud and conspiracy charges that accused him of using FTX like a personal slush fund to make risky investments, political donations and to buy lavish real estate.
Sam Bankman-Fried’s ex-girlfriend and the co-founder of FTX pleaded guilty to criminal charges and are cooperating with prosecutors, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said Dec. 21
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(LOS ANGELES) — With more than 15 million people across California under flood alerts, heavy rain will return to the state on Saturday after an overnight pause.
Over 33,000 customers across California are without power as the state continues to be walloped by an ongoing atmospheric river. The state’s coastal cities of Aptos and Capitola continue to deal with significant impacts from multiple rounds of rain and coastal flooding. Coastal roads have been partially washed away with many businesses and homes flooded.
Another break in the rain will occur during the day Sunday before much of California is slammed by heavy rain overnight Sunday throughout the day Monday.
More rain is expected throughout the week as the West Coast continues dealing with the wet pattern. As much as over a foot of rain is expected for parts of Northern California at higher elevations throughout the next seven days, with 5 to 10 inches of rain expected across Northern California and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Even Los Angeles and Coastal Southern California will see the potential for up to 6 inches of rain throughout the next week.
Wind alerts are in effect for over 15 million people with winds expected to gust upwards of 60 miles per hour along parts of coastal Northern California later Saturday.
While much of California has been walloped by abnormally significant rainfall, higher elevations are being buried in snow. Winter storm alerts are in effect across four states from Washington to Colorado Saturday morning. More than 30 inches of snow have fallen over the past 24 hours in the area south of Lake Tahoe with multiple feet of snow still possible.
A large swath of the Sierra Nevada Mountains will see as much as 5 feet over the next seven days, especially south of Lake Tahoe.
Parts of Utah and Colorado picked up notable snowfall totals on Friday as the same system that impacted California earlier in the week moved into the Rockies.
As much as 22 inches of snow were reported south of Salt Lake City while more than 6 inches fell near Grand Junction, Colorado. While not as much as California, up to a foot of snow is still to come in these areas, which will add to their already impressive snowpack of the 2022-2023 winter season.
(NEW YORK) — A new bill would make it a felony for anyone under the age of 26 to access gender-confirming care in the state of Oklahoma.
Senate Bill 129, sponsored by Republican state Sen. David Bullard, is the most recent anti-transgender care bill to be introduced in an ongoing push against gender-confirming care by Republican legislators across the country.
Though many of these bills have initially targeted minors, several recently proposed bills have started extending the bans into adulthood.
Under this bill, physicians and health care providers cannot provide gender transition procedures to a patient under the age of 26 or refer them “to any healthcare professional for gender transition procedures.”
A referral would be classified as “unprofessional conduct” and may result in “immediate revocation of the license or certificate of the physician or other healthcare professional.”
Sen. Bullard’s office has not responded to a request for comment by ABC News.
Another recently introduced bill in Oklahoma, House Bill 101, aims to ban these procedures for people under the age of 21.
States, including Oklahoma, Florida, Arkansas, Idaho and Alabama, all have policies or laws restricting gender-confirming care, though many are being battled out in court.
Oklahoma currently has laws in place that ban trans athletes in state schools from participating in sports that correspond with their gender identity, a ban on trans people using the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity, and bans non-binary gender markers on state birth certificates.
(NEW YORK) — A pair of former election workers who became the subjects of a Trump-backed conspiracy theory in the aftermath of the 2020 election are set receive the Presidential Citizens Medal at a White House ceremony on Friday, less than a week after former President Donald Trump renewed attacks on them.
Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, both former election workers from Fulton County, Georgia, are among 12 individuals who will be honored by President Joe Biden for making “exemplary contributions to our democracy surrounding January 6, 2021,” the White House said.
“My mother and I didn’t seek out the spotlight,” Moss said in a statement to ABC News. “We just wanted to do our part to make democracy work well for everyone … and we’re incredibly honored to receive this recognition.”
In testimony before the House Jan. 6 Committee and in an exclusive interview with ABC News in November, Moss and Freeman described in detail how their lives and livelihoods were flipped upside down after Trump and his allies accused the two women of engaging in election fraud.
Trump referred to the two women more than a dozen times in his infamous Jan. 2, 2021, phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, falsely calling Freeman a “professional vote-scammer and hustler.”
Relentless threats of violence, both online and in person, ensued, driving both of the woman from their work as election officers and, in Freeman’s case, from her home. The pair became casualties of the so-called “Big Lie” — Trump’s false narrative that the 2020 presidential election was rigged in favor of Biden.
“I wouldn’t wish the hate and fear we experienced on anyone,” Freeman said in a statement to ABC News. “But what has lifted our spirits is the outpouring of support we’ve received from people who love this country and our democracy as much as we do.”
Earlier this week, Trump renewed attacks on Freeman, whom he accused of lying to the Jan. 6 Committee after the complete transcript of her interview with the panel was made public.
“What will the Great State of Georgia do with the Ruby Freeman MESS?” Trump said on his social media platform, Truth Social.
Von DuBose, a lawyer representing Freeman and Moss in a defamation lawsuit against Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, said Trump “continues to threaten their safety.”
“Nobody, not even a former president, has a right to intentionally spread damaging, defamatory lies about fellow citizens,” Dubose said.
(NEW YORK) — Ten states are on alert for flooding, mudslides, heavy snow, avalanche danger and strong winds Friday morning as series of new storms are expected to pound the West Coast.
Heavy snow will be falling in Colorado and Utah, with up to 20 inches of snow possible in Utah.
Nearly 60,000 California customers are still without power.
In California, winds gusts up to 132 mph were reported in Alpine Meadows and up to 60 mph at San Francisco International Airport.
Winds in Los Angeles County gusted up to 87 mph and up to 63 mph on the Santa Barbara County coast on Thursday.
Heavy rain fell in California with 5.05 inches falling in Los Angeles County and 6.57 inches falling in Ventura County. Downtown San Francisco also experienced their wettest 10 days since 1871 with 10.33 inches of rain falling in the 10 day period from Dec. 26 through Jan. 4.
Most of California will be getting a short break from heavy rain and snow before another storm arrives this weekend.
With the next storm on the way, heavy rain is expected in the San Francisco Bay area Saturday morning into Saturday night. This rain gets lighter as it moves into Southern California by early Sunday morning.
Another storm arrives into California Sunday evening with more rain. It is expected to impact most of California next week, including San Francisco and Los Angeles.
With these two storms coming, up to 10 inches of rain is possible in some parts of California.
Up to 6 feet of snow is possible in the mountains over the next few days. An avalanche warning was issued for the area.
Elsewhere, a different storm produced 23 reported tornadoes across the South.
Seven tornadoes were confirmed in Illinois alone, making it the biggest tornado outbreak for the state since 1989.
To the north, up to 15 inches of snow fell in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, breaking a daily record and making it the snowiest start to January in five years.
With more than 48 inches of snow so far this season, this is the snowiest start to winter in almost 30 years at Minneapolis−Saint Paul International Airport.
(NEW YORK) — Authorities seized record amounts of fentanyl-laced prescription pills and powder in New York state in 2022, fueling more than 2,300 fatal overdoses in New York City alone, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the New York City Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor said Thursday.
Fentanyl is the most dangerous drug to ever hit the streets and the DEA’s New York Division, covering the entire state, seized 1.9 million fentanyl-laced, fake prescription pills in 2022, a 152% increase from the prior year.
The agency seized nearly 2,000 pounds of fentanyl powder, the equivalent of 72 million lethal doses.
“To put that into perspective, throughout 2022 we seized enough deadly doses of fentanyl in New York for more than three times the population of New York State,” DEA Special Agent in Charge Frank A. Tarentino said in a statement.
In 2022, cases handled by New York City’s Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor resulted in the seizure of nearly one million counterfeit pills containing fentanyl, an increase of more than 425% over 2021.
“Thousands of New Yorkers are mourning precious lives claimed by deadly fentanyl last year,” Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget G. Brennan said in a statement. “Fentanyl saturates the illegal drug supply in New York City and is a factor in roughly 80% of overdose deaths.”
Mexican drug cartels often press fentanyl into counterfeit pills designed to look like blue oxycodone pills, or in a number of colors, often referred to as rainbow fentanyl. The DEA issued a warning in August about the multicolor pills, saying they were being used to target children and young people.
Fentanyl trafficked by the Sinaloa and CJNG drug cartels is produced at secret factories in Mexico with chemicals largely from China, the DEA said.
The DEA announced in late December that it had seized a record 50.6 million fentanyl-laced, fake prescription pills and more than 10,000 pounds of fentanyl powder nationwide in 2022.
“These seizures — enough deadly doses of fentanyl to kill every American — reflect the DEA’s unwavering commitment to protect Americans and save lives, by tenaciously pursuing those responsible for the trafficking of fentanyl across the United States,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in a statement at the time.
(NEW YORK) — The judge overseeing New York Attorney General Letitia James’ $250 million civil lawsuit against former President Trump is pondering whether to sanction his attorneys, new court filings revealed Thursday.
Judge Arthur Engoron, in an email to the attorneys, said he “is considering imposing sanctions for frivolous litigation” over Trump’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
Trump’s attorneys, Alina Habba, Christopher Kise and Clifford Robert, argued the lawsuit should be dismissed because the attorney general lacks standing or capacity to sue. They also echoed Trump’s “witch hunt” line by arguing “the NYAG has pursued this crusade against all things Trump.”
Those are “the same legal arguments that this Court previously rejected,” Engoron said.
“[D]efendants are making the same arguments based on the same facts and the same law,” Engoron’s email said. The defense attorneys responded in a letter that said they acted properly to advance their client’s interests.
“There was and is no intention to disregard or disrespect the Court or its rulings, but fundamental principles of advocacy and established law require presentation and preservation of arguments even where there is, respectfully, disagreement between the parties and/or the Court. This is the core of the adversarial process and in no way reflects any effort to disrespect the Court or impede the course of these proceedings,” the defense letter said.
In its own letter to the judge, the attorney general’s office did not take a position on whether Engoron should impose sanctions but senior counsel Kevin Wallace noted “the form of the rehashed arguments here appears calculated to delay the proceedings and needlessly divert the parties’ and court’s resources.”
James filed her lawsuit in September after a three-year investigation into Trump’s business practices. It names Trump, his three eldest children, his company and its two executives, and accuses them of fraudulently adjusting the value of the Trump real estate portfolio to obtain better terms on loans and taxes. The lawsuit, which Trump wholly denies, alleged that the defendants inflated Trump’s net worth to obtain better lending terms than deserved.
(NEW YORK) — The Kilauea volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island has started erupting again.
The U.S. Geological Survey said Thursday night that its Hawaiian Volcano Observatory “detected glow” in webcam images of the Kilauea summit, “indicating that the eruption has resumed within Halemaʻumaʻu crater in Kīlauea’s summit caldera, within Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park.”
The USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory has elevated the volcano alert from “watch” to “warning.”
“The opening phases of eruptions are dynamic. Webcam imagery shows fissures at the base of Halemaʻumaʻu crater generating lava flows on the surface of the crater floor,” the USGS said. “The activity is confined to Halemaʻumaʻu and the hazards will be reassessed as the eruption progresses.”
The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency said lava is confined to the crater and that no communities are threatened.
Just last month, both Kilauea, one of the most active volcanos in the world, and Mauna Loa, the largest volcano in the world, ignited the landscape of Hawaii’s Big Island.
Officials told ABC News at the time that it was a sign that Pele, the Polynesian goddess of fire, is blessing the land.
Locals and tourists alike flocked to the best spots to take in the views of the red-hot lava slowly bubbling from the crater of the volcanoes at the time.
The double eruption was so unique because the volcanoes are fed by different magma or “plumbing” systems, and neither eruption is sparked by the other, Jessica Ferracane, public affairs specialist for Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, told ABC News at the time.
Mauna Loa had not erupted since 1984.
A lake of lava has been forming inside the summit crater of Kilauea since September 2021, and Kilauea has been erupting consistently ever since, according to Ferracane. But in 2018, about 700 homes were destroyed during a particularly devastating eruption at Kilauea, which caused the entire summit to collapse into a crater quadruple its size and closed the park for 134 days, Ferracane said.
(WASHINGTON) — Two years after the Jan. 6 attack, U.S. Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn says he’s still dealing with the emotional scars from that day.
Dunn, who struggled to defend the Capitol amid the hours of violence, described how his PTSD flared up this past fall.
“That moment in time hit me so hard is because I have made such good progress, to heal and be able to deal with these emotions and these feelings in a healthy manner and, you know, I could walk in and not be fazed by seeing somebody in a MAGA hat or a Confederate flag …. I made such good progress,” Dunn said in an interview with ABC News Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas.
“But it was all just like out of nowhere just ripped away from me. And it wasn’t a specific incident that caused it. Man, I thought I had this under control. I beat this,” he said. “But no, it literally just came out of nowhere and it broke me, you know it broke me.”
The interview will air on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday.
Nearly 140 officers from both the Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department and the Capitol Police were injured when pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol, according to a recent estimate by the U.S. Capitol Police union.
While Dunn said he has more good days than bad, he said the insurrection is never far from his mind. He continues to work at the Capitol, making a point of walking through the Rotunda each day, marveling at all it means to him and the country, mindful that all it stood for could have been toppled two years ago.
On Friday, Dunn and fellow officers will be awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal — the nation’s second-highest civilian honor — from President Joe Biden.
Dunn, who testified before the House Jan. 6 committee, told Thomas that Donald Trump needs to be held responsible.
“I believe he should be held accountable for his actions or inactions of that day. … And he needs to be held accountable and that’s why all eyes are on the Justice Department right now,” he said. “Because they’re the ones who can bring forth accountability. … There were criminal things that the former president has done. I don’t see how you cannot hold him accountable for that day,” he said.
Dr. Amy Cooter has studied militias and domestic terrorism for years. – ABC News
(MIDDLEBURY, Vt.) — As the nation marks the second anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, an expert on domestic terrorism is sounding the alarm of her concerns about future politically motivated attacks.
Amy Cooter, a senior research fellow at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at Middlebury College, told ABC News that while not everyone involved in the attack was officially part of a militia or right-wing group, many shared common beliefs with those militant groups. Cooter said she was concerned those individuals could be recruited to join right-wing groups and can be easy to recruit.
“I don’t think that Jan. 6 is the end of the story. I’m quite concerned about the activities that we’ll see headed into the next presidential election cycle in particular,” Cooter told ABC News.
The Southern Poverty Law Center characterizes militia groups “by their obsession with FTX’s (field training exercises), guns, uniforms typically resembling those worn in the armed forces and a warped interpretation of the Second Amendment.”
Cooter has done extensive research on extremist groups and even spent three years embedded in Michigan militia groups as a graduate student, observing how they recruited and trained people.
“I went to field days, training exercises, their public meetings and other events, starting in about 2008,” she said.
One major takeaway from her experience, she said, is that despite holding what some may think are extremist views on politics and current events, many of the militia members she met blend into society like everyday people.
“The reality is many people who are in militias are very normal people, people who have jobs who have families who if you met them on the street, you might not ever guess they were actually a militia member,” Cooter said.
Cooter said that the inconspicuousness of militias is troubling, possibly leading to a rise in such groups over the years.
Around 2008, militia membership dramatically increased amidst economic concerns and President Barack Obama’s election win, according to non-profits that track extremist activity.
There were 50 active militias in 2007, but By late 2009, there were more than 200, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
While militia growth slowed in the years after the 2008 surge, experts saw another spike after the 2016 presidential election.
In 2017, the number of armed militia groups rose 65% from 165 chapters to 273 chapters, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Cooter said that the second surge was different, because militia involvement historically declined during Republican administrations. However, she said that during former President Donald Trump’s administration, there was more fervor for those militias that in part was fueled by the former president’s rhetoric.
“Instead of making them feel like their concerns about the economy or about immigration were taken care of, [Trump] made them feel like those concerns were legitimate and getting bigger,” she said.
Cooter explained that militias have not only become more vocal online, but more aggressive in real life, as when some gathered during a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.
She said the Jan. 6 insurrection came as little surprise to people who have been observing extremism in the country as it was widely discussed on social media sites like Parlor and Telegram. Some militias and right-wing groups, like the Proud Boys, were active in these channels and helped spur others to take part in the rally and later the attack on the Capitol by promoting lies about the election.
“It’s important to recognize that these groups are complex,” she said.
An assessment report submitted by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to Congress in October found that the threat from “militia violent extremists” increased in 2020 and was likely to be “elevated throughout 2021 because of contentious sociopolitical factors that motivate them to commit violence.”
The assessment also stated, “In FY 2020, the FBI, often in coordination with partner agencies, arrested approximately 180 [domestic terror] subjects. In FY 2021, the FBI, often in coordination with partner agencies, arrested approximately 800 [domestic terror] subjects.”
Although social media sites like Facebook have taken action to ban and restrict anti-government groups from operating on their platforms, militia groups have used other online platforms and in some cases gather in person to conduct their activities, according to Cooter. This has made it harder to track the groups, she said.
“We know as of right now, that our best estimates of people who were involved on Jan. 6, the vast majority of folks were not actually formally affiliated with a militia or some other kind of group,” she said. “So we really need to pay attention to…how that ideology does map onto people we think of as being more normal.”
