Indictment

Rats fed fructose-laced drinking water for six weeks performed more slowly in a maze-navigating task, UCLA researchers have found. (Read this L.A. Times opinion article .) They think the effect is due to changes in the way the brain responds to insulin as a result of exposure to fructose. “Our study shows that a high fructose diet harms the brain as well as the body,” study senior author and UCLA professor Fernando Gomez-Pinilla said in a release about the finding, which was published in the Journal of Physiology (postdoc Rahul Agrawal was first author)

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said Tuesday that the corruption investigation of Assessor John Noguez has grown to include multiple targets and that he intends to seek grand jury indictments in the near future. In his first public comments about the expanding criminal probe, Cooley also accused the union that represents assessor's office employees of interfering with the investigation by ordering members to refuse to cooperate without permission from Noguez's office.

Under an indictment last amended in November 2009, the U.N. war crimes tribunal has filed these charges against former Bosnian Serb military chief Gen. Ratko Mladic: • One count each of genocide in the town of Srebrenica and elsewhere in Bosnia-Herzegovina; complicity in genocide; persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds; extermination; deportation; unlawfully inflicting terror upon civilians; cruel treatment; attacks on civilians;...

Three Orange County residents are among six people charged with fraud related to an alleged real estate flipping scheme that bilked at least $4.2 million from more than three dozen victims, prosecutors said. All six were accused of promising investors title to bank-owned homes that they said could be easily resold for a profit, according to the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles. The scheme lasted from mid-2009 through mid-2010 and targeted victims through seminars held online and in Irvine, Costa Mesa, Florida and Texas, according to the indictment.

Attorneys for state Sen. Roderick Wright will try to get the Inglewood Democrat's eight-count felony indictment thrown out by arguing that prosecutors misled grand jurors weighing whether he lived in his district, in part by not telling them about relevant case law and election codes. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy is expected to take up the motion to dismiss the case, along with the prosecution's response, during a pretrial conference Thursday. The district attorney's office obtained an indictment on two counts of perjury, one count of filing a false declaration of candidacy and five counts of voting fraud, all stemming from Wright's claim to have been living in a multi-family complex he bought some three decades ago in Inglewood, in the 25th Senate District he represents.

Faisal Shahzad was indicted by a federal grand jury Thursday on charges that he attempted to set off a car bomb in New York's Times Square after undergoing explosives training from a militant extremist group, receiving thousands of dollars in cash from a co-conspirator and leaving a loaded semiautomatic rifle in his second car. The indictment, returned in U.S. District Court in New York, charged Shahzad with 10 criminal counts, including the...

The surgeon who ran the liver transplant program at St. Vincent Medical Center was indicted by a federal grand jury Wednesday for allegedly covering up the misallocation of a liver -- a significant breach of transplant rules that prompted the hospital to close the program four years ago. Dr. Richard R. Lopez Jr., 54, is accused of lying to national transplant officials and directing his staff to falsify records involving a September 2003 transplant....

Four California men have been indicted for allegedly using their company, Wiseguy Tickets Inc., to fraudulently buy and sell tickets to popular concerts and sporting events. In a 43-count indictment, Kenneth Lowson, 40, Kristofer Kirsch, 37, and Faisal Nahdi, 36, of Los Angeles and 37-year-old Joel Stevenson of Alameda are charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and gain unauthorized access to computer systems, as well as damaging computers in interstate commerce. The indictment, unsealed Monday in New Jersey, alleged that the four took in $25 million by fraudulently buying and reselling tickets for Bruce Springsteen and Hannah Montana concerts, Rose Bowl and Yankees games and other events.

An unsuccessful plan to detonate homemade bombs in the New York subway system last year was orchestrated by senior Al Qaeda leaders who were also plotting a comparable attack in Britain, according to a terrorism indictment unsealed Wednesday. "The charges announced today illustrated the coordinated and persistent attempts by our adversaries to harm American citizens," said George Venizelos, acting assistant director in charge of the FBI's New York office. Adnan Shukrijumah, a U.S. citizen who was regarded as one of Al Qaeda's best hopes to execute a plot in post- 9/11 America, is among several new alleged Al Qaeda figures charged in the botched Manhattan attempt.

A federal grand jury Thursday indicted former baseball pitching ace Roger Clemens on charges of lying to Congress when he repeatedly denied under oath that he had used anabolic steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs. According to the indictment, the seven-time Cy Young Award winner "well knew" that he was trying to hide the truth from a House oversight committee in 2008 when he said: "Let me be clear. I have never taken steroids or HGH" — human growth hormone, another banned drug.

Three Orange County residents are among six people charged with wire fraud related to an alleged real estate flipping scheme that bilked at least $4.2 million from more than three dozen victims, prosecutors said. Six people in all are accused of promising investors title to bank-owned homes that they claimed could be easily resold for a profit, according to the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles. The scheme lasted from mid-2009 through mid-2010 and targeted victims through seminars held online and in Irvine, Costa Mesa, Florida and Texas, according to the indictment.

One of six men indicted last week in the corruption scandal engulfing the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum remains at large and has given no sign that he plans to surrender to face charges of embezzlement and conspiracy, prosecutors said Monday. Tony Estrada, a longtime janitorial contractor at the historic stadium, is accused of making $385,000 in illegal payments to former Coliseum General Manager Patrick Lynch, who was also charged in the indictment. Most of the money was deposited in a Miami bank account.

In a public corruption scandal that has tarred one of the city's most treasured landmarks, six men were charged Friday with bilking the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum out of millions of dollars during a six-year spree of embezzlement, bribery and kickbacks. Among those named in a 29-count indictment were three former managers of the taxpayer-owned Coliseum and two of the nation's most prominent rave promoters, Insomniac Inc. Chief Executive Pasquale Rotella and Go Ventures Inc. head Reza Gerami.

It took one simple mistake for Hector Xavier Monsegur, a hacker who goes by the name Sabu, to get caught by the FBI. That mistake led not only to his arrest but also to that of five other alleged hackers who, according to a grand jury indictment, have ties to high-profile underground groups online: LulzSec, AntiSec and Anonymous. The indictment filed in a U.S. District Court in New York ties the arrested men to online attacks against Sony, Fox, PBS, the Central Intelligence Agency, Visa, MasterCard and PayPal.

This post has been corrected. See the note at the bottom for details. It took one simple mistake for Hector Xavier Monsegur, a hacker who goes by the name Sabu, to get caught by the FBI. On Tuesday, the world found out that Monsegur's mistake is sending ripples through the hacking community and into high-profile groups such as LulzSec, AntiSec and Anonymous. Six alleged hackers from those three prominent collectives have been charged in New York for executing a series of online attacks against the likes of Sony, Fox, PBS, Bethesda Softworks, the Central Intelligence Agency and a number of financial institutions such as Visa, MasterCard and PayPal.

Here is a roundup of alleged cons, frauds and schemes to watch out for. Personalized T-shirts — The Better Business Bureau is warning that a company that sells made-to-order T-shirts has pocketed consumers' money without delivering the goods. The consumer group said it has received more than 100 complaints from consumers who said they paid Personally Yours for personalized T-shirts but did not receive them and could not get refunds. "When making online purchases, the best recourse consumers have is to pay by credit card," said Robert Crockett, chief executive of the BBB serving Southern Nevada.

The U.N. International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague has indicted Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic as a war criminal (May 27-28). Will the tribunal have the courage to indict the other war criminals, namely, Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, William Cohen and Sandy Berger? These four have bombed hospitals, schools, villages, residential areas, refugees in buses and trains and have denied millions of people drinking water by destroying their water supply. By all accepted definitions these are war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The investigation into John Edwards’ alleged campaign-finance improprieties and their connection to his then-mistress, Rielle Hunter, appears to be nearing its end, with an indictment possible in coming days. Both ABC and CNN are reporting that the Justice Department has been given the go-ahead to prosecute the 2008 presidential candidate over payments his campaign and supporters allegedly made to Hunter during her affair with Edwards. Edwards, according to reports, must now decide whether to try and work out a plea deal or fight the charges in court.

This post has been updated. See note at the bottom for details.  A retired British businessman was expected to make his first appearance in a federal court in El Paso on Monday after he was extradited last week on charges that he tried to sell missile batteries to Iran in 2006. Christopher Tappin, 65, turned himself in Friday after fighting extradition for two years and was taken to El Paso by federal marshals. Daryl Fields, spokesman for the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, told The Times that Tappin was scheduled to have an initial hearing on Monday afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Castañeda.

Each week, the FBI sends reporters an email of "top ten news stories" that it hopes will hit the headlines. The press releases usually highlight crooks nabbed, terrorism plots foiled and convictions notched up by the straight-shooting, gang-busting agents from the world's most famous law enforcement agency. It's doubtful any of the cases the FBI likes to publicize made it into Tim Weiner's absorbing "Enemies: A History of the FBI. " It is a scathing indictment of the FBI as a secret intelligence service that has bent and broken the law for decades in the pursuit of Communists, terrorists and spies.