The Department of Justice and its federal brethren unsealed a pair of indictments Wednesday that merit interest. First, in New York, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District has indicted an alleged Russian arms dealer and his associate with trying to purchase two aircraft from U.S. companies. The suspect, who is currently in custody in Thailand, is also wanted by the U.S. for selling millions of dollars worth of weapons to FARC – a Colombian foreign-terrorist organization. Viktor Bout – aka Boris, aka Viktor Budd, aka Viktor Butt (among others) – has allegedly been an international weapons trafficker since the 1990s. His customers? Regimes in Afghanistan, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Sierra Leone and more. The intrigue continues in this DOJ press release.
Meanwhile, down in Florida, West Palm Beach man Willoughby Farr is charged with a ‘cramming scheme’ in which extra charges are added to a person’s phone bill for collect calls that were never made. From April 2003 to December 2005 Farr arranged with local phone companies to make collect call charges through three West Palm Beach companies he owned anonymously. One of the reason he hid his ownership in the companies? He was already in prison. More to this story can be found in this DOJ press release.
