A man who helped murder a 14-year-old in Holmes Run Stream Valley Park nearly eight years ago will spend a quarter-century in prison for his role in the crime.
Edwin Orellana Caballero was sentenced yesterday (Wednesday) to 25 years in prison — the maximum possible sentence — by U.S. District Judge Rossie D. Alston Jr., the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia announced.
A member of a local branch of the transnational gang MS-13, Orellana Caballero pleaded guilty to maiming in aid of racketeering activity in November.
Orellana Caballero was 16 years old and a resident of Alexandria when he joined other MS-13 members in attacking the 14-year-old — who’s identified in court documents as S.A.A.T. — in the Lincolnia section of Holmes Run park on Sept. 26, 2016, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
“The gang lured S.A.A.T. to Holmes Run Stream Valley Park in Fairfax County and murdered him in a wooded area there with knives, machetes, and a pickaxe,” the news release says. “Orellana Caballero struck S.A.A.T. multiple times with the pickaxe. Once S.A.A.T. was dead, the gang buried him in a shallow grave.”
Police found the 14-year-old’s body inside the park near the intersection of Crater Place and Yellowstone Drive on March 2, 2017 after a tip prompted a two-day search of the area. A second set of remains uncovered in the same area was a 17-year-old identified by federal prosecutors as E.E.E.M.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, E.E.E.M. was lured to Holmes Run Stream Valley Park by MS-13 members on Aug. 28, 2016, because they “erroneously suspected” that he belonged to a rival gang. He was stabbed and cut more than 100 times with knives, a machete and a pickaxe.
A month later, the same individuals targeted S.A.A.T. under the suspicion that he was a police informant.
Seventeen people have been charged in connection with the two murders. Five men who went to trial were convicted of murder and kidnapping by a jury in July 2022, resulting in life-long prison sentences for all of them. Orellana Caballero is one of 10 defendants so far to plead guilty before a trial.
“In so doing, he admitted to participating in S.A.A.T.’s murder for the purpose of maintaining and increasing his position in MS-13,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Orellana Caballero’s sentencing was announced by U.S. Attorney Jessica Aber, Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis and FBI Washington Field Office Special Agent in Charge David Scott.
A McLean resident has pleaded guilty to spending federal COVID-19 relief funds intended for his home business on personal expenses, including gambling and real estate payments.
Mehdi Pazouki, 65, pleaded guilty in federal court on Friday (Feb. 23) to defrauding the Small Business Administration of approximately $455,000 in loans created to help businesses survive during the pandemic, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Eastern District of Virginia.
The office says Pazouki applied for funds from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program between August 2020 and August 2021 that he claimed would be spent on Systems Integration Services Inc., the IT consulting company he ran out of his McLean home.
“He actually intended to, and did, use [the money] to fund his gambling at area casinos, pay down personal debt, and purchase real estate,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a news release.
More from the Department of Justice:
Within days of receiving his first EIDL disbursement, Pazouki spent over $27,000 in EIDL money at Hollywood Casino in Charles Town, West Virginia. Pazouki also used the PPP and EIDL money for down payments on two different real estate properties, to pay off his personal credit card debt, and to fund his personal investment account. Pazouki also falsely represented to the SBA in loan forgiveness applications that the PPP money had been used for legitimate business expenses, which resulted in the complete discharge of the loans.
Pazouki could face up to 20 years in prison when he’s sentenced on May 24, though the press release notes that “actual sentences for federal crimes are typically less than the maximum penalties.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced last August that the Justice Department had recovered over $1.4 billion in COVID-19 relief funds that were allegedly obtained through fraud by over 3,000 defendants.
The PPP and EIDL programs were both created by the CARES Act in 2020 to assist small business owners during the lockdowns and stay-at-home orders implemented early in the pandemic. Up to $659 billion was available for PPP loans, and $224 billion in EIDL grants and loans were approved through February 2021, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which found that at least 3,000 loans totaling about $156 million went to ineligible applicants.
The PPP program ended on May 31, 2021, while the Small Business Administration shut down its application portal for EIDL funds in May 2022.
Photo via Chris Liverani on Unsplash
A man already convicted of possessing child pornography has been sentenced to life in prison for shooting a fellow military veteran nearly seven years ago.
Jaeyoung Lee was sentenced to life, plus 48 years in prison for shooting Jeremy Tammone on Oct. 21, 2017, leaving him permanently injured, Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano announced Friday (Jan. 26).
Lee, who served in the U.S. Navy for seven years, waited outside Tammone’s apartment in the Franconia District and shot him three times after he answered the door, according to the commonwealth’s attorney’s office.
Tammone is a 50-year-old Army and Marine veteran who was working at that time as a Defense Department contractor, according to an NBC4 report. He was also a friend of a woman who had recently broken up with Lee.
According to prosecutors, Lee had spent months stalking his ex-girlfriend, including by “hacking her social media accounts to monitor her messages, installing cameras in her home, and making copies of her apartment door locks to practice unlocking them.”
Police quickly identified Lee as a suspect in Tammone’s shooting, per NBC4, but his arrest didn’t come until Jan. 9, 2018 after detectives found a device with child pornography images and videos during a search of Lee’s apartment in the “Alexandria section” of Fairfax County.
Initially charged with 20 counts of child porn possession, Lee was ultimately convicted on 100 counts in January 2020, according to Descano’s office. The conviction was appealed and sustained by a three-judge panel in July 2021.
In that case, Lee was sentenced on June 12, 2020 to a total of 20 years in prison — one year for each of the 100 charges, with 80 of them running concurrently instead of consecutively — but 15 years were suspended, giving him five years of active jail time, a spokesperson for the commonwealth’s attorney’s office says.
For the shooting, prosecutors pushed for a life sentence because they believe Lee’s “actions indicate that he remains a serious danger to the community,” Descano said. Lee was convicted of seven felonies in a May 2023 trial.
“Over a period of months, he planned and calculated, committing multiple felonies as he stalked his ex-girlfriend,” Descano said. “This period of dangerous obsession culminated in one of the worst possible outcomes: a victim’s life permanently destroyed.”
Tammone continues to suffer from the brain and organ damage he sustained from the shooting, which left him unable to eat or drink, NBC4 reported. He and his family told the news station that they felt Lee’s sentencing was an “appropriate close of…this horrific chapter” of their lives.
In addition to the life sentence for aggravated malicious wounding, Lee received three years for using a firearm in a felony, 20 years for malicious computer trespassing, 10 years for possessing burglary tools, and five years each for wiretapping and two counts of using a computer to obtain personal information, per Descano’s office.
“Individuals who pose this kind of danger receive sentences that first and foremost keep the community safe,” Descano said. “I’m grateful to the detectives and prosecutors who helped bring this case through to the end, and I hope that closing the book today brings a measure of justice the victims and their families.”
The commonwealth’s attorney’s office also announced a life-in-prison sentence on Friday for McLean resident Megan Hargan, who shot and killed her mother and sister on July 14, 2017.
A McLean woman will serve two life sentences in prison for murdering her mother and sister in 2017, county prosecutors announced today (Friday).
Megan Hargan received the two life sentences for fatally shooting her mother, Pamela Hargan, 63, and Helen Hargan, 24, in their house on July 14, 2017. She also got an additional sentence of six years in prison for two gun-related charges, according to the Fairfax County Office of the Commonwealth’s Attorney.
Hargan was convicted by a jury in September of first-degree murder and use of a firearm in a felony. It was her second conviction after an initial one handed down in March 2022 got vacated by a judge who determined that a juror had improperly experimented with a rifle at home to see if Helen Hargan could’ve died by suicide, as defense attorneys alleged.
“Megan Hargan’s actions in July 2017 go beyond what most of us can imagine,” Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano said. “On a quiet Friday morning in her mother’s home, she made an irreversible decision — one that would devastate her family and tear the community apart. First-degree murder is the most serious offense you can be convicted of in Virginia, and today’s sentence reflects the gravity of the defendant’s crimes.”
After finding the bodies of Pamela and Helen Hargan inside their home in the 6700 block of Dean Drive, the Fairfax County Police Department initially characterized the deaths as a murder-suicide incident, but they suspected early on that the scene might have been staged.
Police and prosecutors later argued that Megan Hargan had killed her mother and sister over a financial disagreement.
More from the Office of the Commonwealth’s Attorney:
On the afternoon of July 14, 2017, Megan Hargan, 41, shot Pamela, 63, and Helen, 24, in Pamela’s McLean home where the three were living at the time, along with Hargan’s then-8-year-old daughter. Hargan staged the house as a murder-suicide and claimed that younger sister Helen had killed their mom before killing herself.
Evidence presented at trial showed that the conflict stemmed from a financial dispute: Megan, who was buying a house in West Virginia, resented that her mother, Pamela, wasn’t helping her financially but was at the same time helping her sister Helen to buy a house. On July 13, the day before the killings, Megan attempted to transfer upwards of $400,000 from her mother’s bank account to pay for Megan’s new house, which was closing that day. The transaction was flagged as fraud, and the next day Megan shot her mother before attempting to make the same wire transfer again from her mother’s account. She then shot her sister Helen, who was upstairs at the time. Both family members were killed by a .22 rifle, which belonged to Megan’s husband and was being stored in the McLean house temporarily.
Megan Hargan was arrested on Nov. 9, 2018.
“This was a complicated case to prosecute, and we would not be here today without the detectives, witnesses, and family members who persisted through two lengthy, emotional trials,” Descano said. “I want to express my gratitude for their resolve in bringing this case to justice.”
The man behind Divan in McLean has been sentenced to nearly five years in prison for failing to pay taxes and stealing COVID-19 relief funds — including money used to establish the Persian restaurant.
Gholam “Tony” Kowkabi, 63, of Vienna was sentenced by a federal judge on Monday (Dec. 18) to 57 months in prison after pleading guilty on Aug. 14, the U.S. Attorney’s Office of D.C. announced.
His wife Karen Kowkabi, 64, also pleaded guilty to tax evasion and has been sentenced to 24 months of probation.
The pair has also agreed to pay the $1.35 million that they owe the IRS, and Gholam Kowkabi must pay $738,657 to the Small Business Administration as restitution for the relief funds that he got to support his Georgetown restaurant, Ristorante Piccolo, during the COVID-19 pandemic but spent instead on personal expenses.
“As part of his guilty plea, Mr. Kowkabi acknowledged having spent money intended to help his business on a waterfront condo in Ocean City, Md., as well as personal investments, vacations for his family, and college tuition for his adult children,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
After serving the prison term, Gholam Kowkabi will be on supervised release for three years.
According to prosecutors, the couple avoided paying federal income and employment taxes from 1998 to 2018 “by concealing assets and obscuring…large sums of money” through property purchases, false entries in their business records and the use of business bank accounts to hide personal purchases.
During that time frame, the Kowkabis owned and operated Ristorante Piccolo, which opened in 1986, as well as the restaurants Catch 15 and Tuscana West, which were also located in D.C. Tuscana West, an Italian eatery, closed after 20 years in 2014, while Catch 15 closed in 2018, not long after filing for bankruptcy protection.
According to the press release, Gholam Kowkabi received over $1.6 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds — including Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans, an Economic Injury Disaster Loan and Restaurant Revitalization Funds — between May 13, 2020 and July 27, 2021.
Instead of using all the money to cover Ristorante Piccolo’s expenses as intended, he spent more than $500,000 to buy a waterfront condo in Ocean City, over $250,000 to build homes in Great Falls, and over $78,500 to establish Divan, which opened at 1313 Old Chain Bridge Road in December 2021.
Funds were also used to on mortgage payments, vacations, personal legal expenses, home improvements and college tuition payments, according to prosecutors.
Gholam Kowkabi was previously sentenced to 18 months in prison for evading $2 million in D.C. sales taxes.
While Divan is still operating, Ristorante Piccolo has been closed since June after suffering damage from a two-alarm fire, including the collapse of its roof.
(Updated at 6:55 p.m. on 2/28/2024) Another suspect in the 2016 murders of two teens at Holmes Run Stream Valley Park in Lincolnia has pleaded guilty.
Edwin Orellana Caballero, a member of the gang La Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, pleaded guilty yesterday (Wednesday) to one count of maiming in aid of racketeering activity in connection to the kidnapping and killing of a 14-year-old from Alexandria, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia announced.
An Alexandria resident who was 16 years old at the time, Orellana Caballero is one of 17 people who have been charged in the case, which also involved the murder of a 17-year-old Falls Church resident.
According to the Department of Justice, Orellana Cabellero and other members of an MS-13 clique known as the Park View Locos Salvatrucha kidnapped and killed the 14-year-old, who’s identified only as S.A.A.T., on Sept. 26, 2016.
“The gang lured S.A.A.T. to Holmes Run Stream Valley Park in Fairfax County and murdered him in a wooded area there with knives, machetes, and a pickaxe,” the DOJ said in the press release. “Specifically, Orellana Caballero struck S.A.A.T. multiple times with the pickaxe. Once S.A.A.T. was dead, the gang buried him in a shallow grave.”
Prosecutors have said that S.A.A.T. was targeted based on an unfounded suspicion that he was a police informant. The 17-year-old, identified as E.E.E.M., was killed at Holmes Run park in a similarly brutal manner on Aug. 28, 2016.
Five of the individuals involved in the murders were convicted by a federal jury in July 2022 and received lifetime prison sentences that November. Including Orellana Cabellero, 10 defendants have now pleaded guilty before a trial, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis joined U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District Jessica Aber and Wayne Jacobs, the special agent in charge of the FBI Washington Field Office’s criminal division to announce Orellana Cabellero’s plea after it was accepted by U.S. District Judge Rossie Alston Jr.
Orellana Cabellero is scheduled for sentencing on Feb. 28, 2024. He faces a potential sentence of at least 20 years and at most 25 years in prison.
Image via Google Maps
Three men have been arrested for coercing women into sex work at “high-end” brothels in Massachusetts and Virginia, the Department of Justice announced yesterday (Wednesday).
Locations used for the brothels include units in Hanover Tysons and Avalon Mosaic, apartment buildings in Tysons and Merrifield, according to a court affidavit by a Department of Homeland Security special agent.
Federal prosecutors have charged Massachusetts residents Han Lee and Junmyung Lee as well as California resident James Lee “with conspiracy to coerce and entice to travel to engage in illegal sexual activity,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office of Massachusetts said in a press release.
According to the DOJ, since at least July 2020, the men enticed primarily Asian women to travel to and work in the brothels, whose clients included “politicians, high tech and pharmaceutical executives, doctors, military officers, government contractors that possess security clearances, professors, lawyers, scientists and accountants.”
Specifically, the defendants allegedly rented high-end apartment complexes as brothel locations, which they furnished and regularly maintained. The monthly rent for the brothel locations were as high as $3,664. It is further alleged that the defendants coordinated the women’s airline travel and transportation and permitted women to stay overnight in the brothel locations so they did not have to find lodging elsewhere, therefore enticing women to participate in their prostitution network.
The locations in Tysons and Merrifield were advertised on a website claiming to be for nude photography models, but the DHS agent says he believes the ads are a “front” for commercial escort or prostitution services.
“Approximately twenty (20) sex buyers were interviewed in connection with this multi-yearlong investigation,” the agent said in the affidavit.
Clients were charged anywhere from $350 up to $600 per hour that they paid in cash, the DOJ says. Prosecutors allege that the defendants concealed “hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash” from the prostitution ring through deposits in their personal bank accounts and “peer-to-peer transfers.”
“Additionally, it is alleged that the defendants regularly used hundreds of thousands of dollars of the cash proceeds from the prostitution business to purchase money orders (in values under an amount that would trigger reporting and identification requirements) to conceal the source of the funds,” the press release said. “These money orders were then used to pay for rent and utilities at brothel locations in Massachusetts and Virginia.”
The defendants could face up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release and fines of up to $250,000 under the sex trafficking charges, according to the DOJ.
Han Lee and Junmyung Lee appeared in a federal court in Boston yesterday after getting arrested that morning, while James Lee was arrested in California and “will appear in federal court in Boston at a later date,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
A 58-year-old tax preparer from Mount Vernon was sentenced to 18 months in prison last week for filing fake tax returns for his “unsuspecting” clients, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Lawrence Appiah-Osei pleaded guilty in June to operating the scheme from 2017 to 2020 from his Mount Vernon home, defrauding the U.S. government of more than $1.4 million, according to a release published Friday (Nov. 3) by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Appiah-Osei started his tax preparation business, New Look Enterprise, in 2016, and the following year “executed a scheme to fraudulently inflate the tax refunds of his clients,” the release said.
“Appiah-Osei falsely claimed that his clients operated businesses that lost thousands of dollars each year,” prosecutors said in the release. “These fraudulent losses drove down the clients’ taxable income and increased the clients’ tax refunds.”
The Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation division estimated the tax loss to be nearly $1.5 million, according to court records.
Image via Google Maps
A 32-year-old man from Groveton pleaded guilty on Thursday (Nov. 2) to defrauding the government of more than $1.4 million in fraudulent pandemic-related Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans and unemployment benefits.
George Mensah, Jr., 32, admitted in federal court to wire and mail fraud by collecting fees with two unnamed conspirators through CashApp, Zelle and bank transfers, according to court records. The scheme ran from Oct. 2020 to Sept. 2021, during which time Mensah admitted to preparing dozens of fake PPP loans and unemployment insurance claims under the CARES Act.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia:
Mensah admitted that he and his coconspirators prepared and submitted over 47 applications for PPP loans for fake businesses. At least 21 of these applications were funded by lenders, which caused an actual loss of at least $583,172. In addition, Mensah admitted that he and his co-conspirators obtained the personally identifiable information of others, including identity theft victims, in order to make claims for pandemic unemployment benefits in Virginia and elsewhere. Mensah admitted that he and his co-conspirators obtained at least $658,952 in fraudulently obtained unemployment insurance and pandemic benefits.
Mensah admitted to committing the schemes from three locations — an apartment in Springfield, an apartment in Tysons and from his parents’ home in Groveton.
“The defendant and his coconspirators created false tax returns, including Schedule C forms, and fake bank statements to accompany the fraudulent PPP loan applications,” according to court records.
Mensah admitted to collected fees through CashApp accounts and bank transfers, according to court records. Additionally, he admitted to receiving at least 20 Way2Go prepaid debit cards from the Virginia Employment Commission.
The maximum penalty for the offense is 30 years in prison, a $1 million fine, or twice the gross gain or loss, full restitution, forfeiture of assets and a maximum supervised release term of five years, according to court records. Mensah also agreed to pay the government back $1.5 million.
The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kimberly Shartar and Kathleen Robeson and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Ezra Spiro.
Mensah will be sentenced on Feb. 14.
Image via Google Maps. This story was previously published by FFXnow’s sister site ALXnow.
(Updated at 3:50 p.m.) Marcia St. John-Cunning no longer needs to run as a write-in candidate to become the Franconia District’s next school board representative.
The former Fairfax County Public Schools interpreter and family liaison re-qualified for the general election ballot yesterday (Wednesday) after a county judge let her submit two more pages of signatures supporting her petition for candidacy.
Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge Richard Gardiner told Fairfax County General Registrar Eric Spicer to accept the 17 signatures “as if [they were] filed with the registrar in March 2023,” according to the order shared on Twitter shared by Bryan Grahm, chair of the Fairfax County Democratic Committee, which has endorsed Marcia St. John-Cunning.
The Fairfax County Office of Elections confirmed her reinstated candidacy with a notice on its website. A spokesperson said the general registrar had no comment beyond that notice.
“We are pleased by today’s order and elated to see her reinstated as a qualified candidate for School Board,” Graham said in a statement last night. “Marcia St. John-Cunning is an exemplary candidate who has worked in our local schools and knows the families of Franconia. The Fairfax County Democratic Committee will be using the next week to ensure Marcia wins this election.”
St. John-Cunning is competing against Republican-endorsed candidate Kevin Pinkney to succeed current Franconia District Representative Tamara Derenak-Kaufax, who is retiring after 12 years on the Fairfax County School Board.
Though she obtained the Democratic endorsement without contest, St. John-Cunning faced two legal challenges by Republicans who argued that petition errors should’ve stopped Fairfax County General Registrar Eric Spicer from certifying her candidacy. A September lawsuit by the Fairfax County Republican Committee that took issue with the lack of dates by some signatures was dismissed.
However, a complaint filed by the 8th Congressional District Republican Committee and two voters in that district found traction with Gardiner, who ruled on Oct. 25 that 11 of St. John-Cunning’s submitted signatures were invalid because her address was wrong on one page of her petition.
The invalidation of those signatures left St. John-Cunning short of the 125 needed to qualify.
St. John-Cunning called the ruling “unprecedented” in an announcement on Saturday (Oct. 28) that she would run as a write-in candidate. With early voting underway since Sept. 22, more than 3,000 Franconia District voters had already cast a ballot, her campaign said.
According to the FCDC, St. John-Cunning’s legal team argued in court yesterday that the signatures should’ve been challenged before the filing deadline on Aug. 18, noting that she had gotten more signatures but didn’t submit them because the registrar said they weren’t necessary to qualify. Her candidacy was originally certified back on March 7.
In a statement, St. John-Cunning called Gardiner’s reinstatement of her candidacy “justice for the 3,000 residents who already exercised their constitutional right to vote.” Read More
