Indictments

Former beauty queen and 1991 Mrs. America Jill Scott Chance was indicted Friday on charges of bankruptcy fraud in pretending to be unmarried. Chance, 40, was also indicted for allegedly not listing more than $100,000 in jewelry when she filed a petition for bankruptcy in 1996. Prosecutors said she married Phoenix auto glass magnate C. Richard "Rick" Chance earlier that year. They have since divorced. Also indicted Friday was her attorney, Gary A. Quackenbush, 41, of San Diego. Assistant U.S.

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.

A third person was indicted Thursday in the case of a homeless man who was hit by a car and left lodged in the windshield until he died. Herbert Cleveland, 24, was charged with helping dump the man's body in Cobb Park to try to conceal the alleged hit and run. According to police, Chante Mallard told investigators she was returning from a nightclub Oct. 26 when she hit Gregory Biggs.

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.

Each of the defendants charged in Count 1 of the indictment was accused of both a principal offense, willfully using unreasonable force against Rodney G. King, and a secondary one, aiding and abetting the other officers. A conviction on either offense is enough to find the defendant guilty of violating the civil rights law. COUNT 1 LAURENCE M.

Former Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, his brother and a former top fundraiser were among six men indicted Thursday on political corruption charges, the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago announced. The sweeping indictment comes four months after Blagojevich was arrested and charged with engaging in pay-to-play politics in a major federal complaint that accused the Democrat of trading state jobs, contracts and regulatory favors for campaign contributions.

The owner of a Claremont doughnut shop was indicted Tuesday on federal charges that he bought endangered-elephant ivory on EBay and smuggled it into the United States from Thailand three years ago. Moun Chau, 50, of Montclair was charged with conspiracy and the illegal importation of wildlife, according to the indictment, which cited violations of the Endangered Species Act and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. The alleged smuggling was discovered in November 2006 when authorities found four African elephant tusks in a shipment purported to be toys.

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....

Temple City's mayor, former mayor and an aide were indicted Wednesday on charges of perjury and soliciting and receiving bribes from a developer in exchange for supporting his $75-million mall project. Mayor Judy Wong, former Mayor Cathe Wilson and Wilson's campaign treasurer, Scott Carwile, pleaded not guilty to the charges after the 21-count grand jury indictment was unsealed by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Patricia Schnegg.

Two hospital executives have been indicted for allegedly paying homeless people for unnecessary medical treatment as part of an ongoing investigation into a scheme to bilk government health programs out of millions of dollars. Robert Bourseau, 74, who was chairman of City of Angels Medical Center, was arrested at his Los Angeles home Friday by federal investigators. Dante Nicholson, the hospital's former senior vice president, is scheduled to appear before a federal judge next month.

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.

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.

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.

  Pakistan'sSupreme Court on Monday indicted Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on contempt charges, accusing him of repeatedly ignoring its orders to revive long-standing corruption proceedings against the nation's president. Gilani must now brace for a trial in coming weeks that could end in his conviction, his disqualification from holding office for five years and a prison term of up to six months. Appearing in the packed courtroom, Gilani could have forestalled the indictment by telling the seven-judge panel that he would comply with its order to write a letter to Swiss authorities asking that they reopen a money laundering case against President Asif Ali Zardari.

By his own admission, Park Jung-geun has long been an Internet wiseguy, a young photographer and blogger with a cyber chip on his shoulder whose favorite target for satire is the North Korean government. For months, his Twitter profile picture showed him with a near-empty bottle of whiskey in his hand, standing in front of a red-starred North Korean flag. Using the handle @seouldecadence, the 23-year-old re-tweeted posts fromPyongyang's Twitter account he deemed particularly ridiculous.

Eric H. Holder Jr. is an attorney general of great integrity and deep experience, but he did neither President Obama nor the country a service Monday when he appointed a longtime federal prosecutor to investigate whether CIA interrogators should be criminally prosecuted for abusive interrogation of Al Qaeda prisoners. The president himself -- with the unqualified support of Leon Panetta, the new director of Central Intelligence -- has already ordered an end to the use of torture against suspected terrorists.

Federal authorities arrested a chiropractor in Las Vegas and indicted him for mail fraud charges for allegedly misappropriating funds he obtained from people investing in a nonexistent "no-frills" airline, U.S. Atty. Nora Manella said. Barry Michaels, also known as Myron Blumberg, 56, is named in a 12-count indictment saying he solicited investor funds while working from an Encino office from March 1992 to April 1993 and later operating from Las Vegas.

An Orange County doctor who authorities said brazenly sold prescriptions for pills as potent as heroin out of Starbucks coffeehouses was arrested late Tuesday after being indicted on federal drug charges. Dr. Alvin Ming-Czech Yee, 43, of Mission Viejo routinely wrote prescriptions for oxycodone, sometimes referred to as synthetic heroin, to his patients, a third of whom were 25 or younger, authorities alleged in court papers. Yee sold the prescriptions for cash after cursory examinations that were often conducted in coffeehouses and other unusual locales, court documents state.

Radio-control parts hidden in roadside bombs in Iraq have been traced to a company in Minnesota, prompting a federal grand jury Tuesday to indict five people in an alleged smuggling ring that sent up to 6,000 of the devices from this country to Iran for use against U.S. military personnel. The alleged plot, run by a group of citizens of Singapore, was designed to skirt U.S. laws against conducting business with Iran, authorities said, adding that they hoped to extradite the defendants for trial in Washington.