Page 5 - ARUBA TODAY

A5
U.S. NEWS Friday 23 august 2019

$ 10

North Dakota agency FBI takes down Nigerian

disregarded policy fraudsters in $46M case

on spill reporting By STEFANIE DAZIO

Associated Press
By JAMES MacPHERSON the agency does not up- LOS ANGELES (AP) — The
Associated Press date initial public reports relationship between a
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — on spills and was consider- Japanese woman and
North Dakota’s Health ing such a move. But the a U.S. Army captain sta-
Department disregarded agency’s website already tioned in Syria started on-
its own policy in updat- described such a policy. line, through an interna-
ing the volume of a 2015 “When Department of En- tional social network for
pipeline spill at a natural vironmental Quality staff digital pen pals. It grew into
gas processing plant, and investigate reported inci- an internet romance over
it remains unclear whether dents, they will update the 10 months of daily emails.
promised quarterly inspec- information and record it It ended with the woman
tions of the site have been in the update section of $200,000 poorer and on
done in the past two years each report, producing the verge of bankruptcy Federal agents hold a detainee, second from left, at a downtown
as cleanup continued. a new version of the sum- after borrowing money Los Angeles parking lot after predawn raids that saw dozens of
Oklahoma-based Oneok mary report with the next from her sister, ex-husband people arrested in the L.A. area Thursday, Aug. 22, 2019.
Partners LP reported a web page update cycle,” and friends to help Capt. Associated Press
10-gallon (38-liter) spill of the website says. “The web Terry Garcia with his plan to world, some of whom like Kingdom through the cap-
natural gas liquids, or “con- page is updated routinely.” smuggle diamonds out of the Japanese woman lost tain’s many purported as-
densate,” from an under- Glatt said Thursday that the Syria. hundreds of thousands of sociates.
ground pipeline at its Gar- agency is not obliged to In reality, there were no dollars. The fraudsters even threat-
den Creek gas plant near update information “unless diamonds and there was “F.K. was and is extreme- ened her with arrest if she
Watford City in July 2015. we have something to up- no Garcia — they were ly depressed and angry did not continue to pay
The company told the state date.” He added: “I can’t part of an elaborate scam about these losses,” the and at one point she trav-
last October that it had re- tell you we were 100% hatched by an interna- federal complaint states. eled to Los Angeles be-
covered 240,000 gallons good on that.” tional ring of cyber thieves “She began crying when cause she was told a Rus-
(908,400 liters) of the liquid Records show regulators operating mainly out of Los discussing the way that sian bank manager had
gas. The second sum was updated the “general en- Angeles and Nigeria. these losses have affected embezzled more than
not put into an incident re- vironmental incident sum- Federal authorities cited her.” $33,000 of her funds.
port that can be accessed mary” three times concern- the case of the Japanese Her relationship began in- Authorities arrested 14 de-
on the agency’s website. ing the spill but left blank woman, known only as nocently in March 2016 fendants Thursday, mostly
“It should have been up- sections for “updated vol- “F.K.” in court papers, on with an email but soon in the Los Angeles area. FBI
dated,” State Environmen- ume.” Glatt said the agen- Thursday when they an- “Garcia” made “romantic agents could be seen pro-
tal Quality Chief Dave cy did not have “good nounced an indictment overtures,” according to cessing suspects in a down-
Glatt said Thursday. “It was numbers” on the spill until charging 80 people with federal authorities. He told town Los Angeles parking
in a file, but people (the the October update from stealing at least $46 million her they couldn’t talk by lot before they were ar-
public) didn’t know where the company. through various schemes phone because he wasn’t raigned in federal court.
to find it.” “Our policy is to put in good that targeted businesses, allowed to use one in Syria. It was not immediately
An incident report has not numbers,” Glatt said. the elderly and anyone So a stream of emails went known if they had attor-
been done since June Glatt did not know how susceptible to a romance back and worth, with her neys who could speak on
2017. At that time, the re- many times the site had scam. Most of the defen- using Google to translate their behalf.
port said the spill site would been inspected but em- dants are Nigerians. his English into her Japa- Two suspects were previ-
be inspected quarterly. phasized that regulators “We believe this is one of nese. A month into the ously in custody and a few
Glatt said he was investi- had been out to the fac- the largest cases of its kind relationship, Garcia told others were arrested earlier
gating whether that had tory near Watford City this in U.S. history,” U.S. Attorney her he’d found a bag of this week. Hanna said he
happened. week, following a story from Nick Hanna told a news diamonds in Syria and he hoped to be able to work
He said the agency is now environmental blog DeS- conference. “We are tak- began introducing her to with foreign governments
working to develop a user- mog, which reported that ing a major step to disrupt his associates, starting with to extradite the remaining
friendly tracking system on the spill may be as large as these criminal networks.” a Red Cross representative defendants.
its website to update the 11 million gallons (9 million The investigation began who told her Garcia had They all face charges of
status and include all doc- imperial gallons). The blog in 2016 with a single bank been injured but had given conspiracy to commit
uments on reported spills. cited an unidentified per- account and one victim, him the box. fraud, conspiracy to laun-
“It’s all going to be right son who provided a draft said Paul Delacourt, as- F.K. ultimately made 35 to der money, and aggra-
there,” Glatt said, adding document on a cleanup sistant director in charge 40 payments, receiving as vated identity theft, and
that he did not know when plan. of the FBI’s Los Angeles of- many as 10 to 15 emails a some are charged with
it would be in place. The company said the ac- fice. It grew to encompass day directing her to send additional offenses for al-
Glatt previously had told tual amounts of the release victims who were targeted money to accounts in the leged fraud and money
The Associated Press that still aren’t known.q in the U.S. and around the U.S., Turkey and the United laundering.q