His attorney, Richard Ceballos, filed a motion Nov. 24 asking to continue the hearing to Jan. 28, citing "a breakdown in the attorney-client relationship." "The reason for the continuance is that Mr. Huffaker has advised me that he no longer wants me to represent him and has taken affirmative steps to obtain new counsel for his sentencing hearing," Ceballos wrote. "Furthermore, Mr. Huffaker has expressly directed me not to file any sentencing memorandum on his behalf until he has secured new counsel."
Chenguang Gong, a dual citizen of the United States and China, pleaded guilty on July 21 to one count of theft of trade secrets. Gong transferred more than 3,600 files from the Los Angeles-area research-and-development company he worked at briefly to personal storage devices, prosecutors said. The stolen files included blueprints for sensors designed to track and detect nuclear, ballistic and hypersonic missiles, as well as blueprints for sensors designed to enable U.S. fighter jets to detect and evade heat-seeking missiles, prosecutors said.
"This is the dream millions of Iranians are fighting. They want to have justice. That's why I want to say [it is] a historical day," Alinejad said. "The killers wanted to see me covered in blood, dead on my porch in Brooklyn, and thanks to law enforcement agents, I am alive. "I have survived three assassination plots, kidnapping ... How lucky am I?" Alinejad added.
As an employee of the popular Chinese food chain living in Mexico, Salamanca-Benitez was "in the throes of a gambling addiction" and struggling to make ends meet, his attorney wrote in court filings. His solution was to broker several high-end methamphetamine deals over the phone, leading to a drug courier taking a total of 30 pounds of the drug to an undercover DEA agent in San Jose and Redwood City, court records show.
OAKLAND A man who allegedly struck it rich through fentanyl sales in the Bay Area has been sentenced to seven years in federal prison, court records show. Milton Varela-Arteaga, 29, was sentenced last month by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, after pleading guilty to possession with the intent to distribute fentanyl. He must serve a four-year supervised release term afterwards, but because he's already been deported to Honduras once, a similar fate likely awaits him after completion of his prison term, according to court records.
Public servants are entrusted to assist people, not exploit them," Foley said. "This was a brazen abuse of power by a federal employee who used his position and access to sensitive information to prey on a vulnerable woman who had just lost her job. This kind of predatory behavior has no place in public service, or anywhere else.
