North Carolina repeat offender pleads guilty to wire fraud
Verdicts & Settlements
A North Carolina man has admitted stealing mail from residential mailboxes and using stolen information to commit wire fraud, a federal prosecutor said.
Soheil Akhavan Rezaie, 37, entered his guilty plea Tuesday before a U.S. magistrate judge in Charlotte, U.S. Attorney Dena King said.
Statements and plea documents showed that, beginning last year and through March, Rezaie and others targeted Charlotte neighborhoods and surrounding areas and stole large quantities of mail, including credit cards, tax forms and personal and business bank checks, a news release said.
Rezaie admitted in court that he altered the amounts of the stolen checks or changed the names of the payees to his own and then deposited them into bank accounts he controlled. He then withdrew the funds before the victims and banks could find out the checks were stolen, prosecutors said.
Rezaie pleaded guilty to wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years and a $250,000 fine. No sentencing date has been set.
Prosecutors said when Rezaie engaged in the fraud, he was on supervised release for a 2017 mail theft conviction. A second revocation of Rezaie’s supervised release is pending for violating the terms of his supervised release for the 2017 conviction.
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Texas Adopts Statewide Texting-While-Driving Ban
Effective September 1, 2017, Texas will become the 47th state to pass a statewide ban on texting while driving. Governor Abbott’s signing of House Bill 62 is an effort to unify Texas under a uniform ban and remedy the “patchwork quilt of regulations that dictate driving practices in Texas.”
The bill specifically prohibits drivers from reading, writing, or sending an electronic message on a device unless the vehicle is stopped. That includes texting and emailing. It does not, however, prohibit dialing a number to call someone, talking on the phone using a hands-free device, or using the phone’s GPS system.
Violations would be punishable by a fine ranging from $25 to $99, to be set by each municipality. Although penalties could rise to as much as $200 for repeat offenders.
Studies have found that a driver’s reaction time is half as much when a driver is distracted by sending or reading a text message. According to state officials, in 2015 more than 105,000 traffic accidents in Texas involved distracted driving, leading to at least 476 fatalities.