Woman sentenced in Phoenix fake coupon ring

PHOENIX (AP) -- A Phoenix woman who pleaded guilty to her involvement in a fake coupon ring was sentenced Thursday to two years in prison and may have to pay up to $5 million in restitution.

Robin Ramirez, 41, also was sentenced to seven years of probation and credited with 287 days already served behind bars.

Maricopa County prosecutors said Ramirez's restitution amount will be determined later but will be capped at $5 million.

Ramirez and two other women were arrested last July after an eight-week investigation by Phoenix police, who said they seized more than $25 million worth of fake coupons and $2 million in other assets from the women's Phoenix-area homes.

Police said Ramirez was the leader of the operation that bought the counterfeit manufacturer coupons overseas and then sold them on a website.

People who purchased the coupons could use them for items from major national manufacturers and could get cash back if the value of the coupon exceeded the item's price, according to authorities.

Police said high-quality copies of manufacturer's coupons began surfacing in the United States from an unknown source about four years ago.

The victimized companies hired private investigators to find where the coupons were being sold, and that led them to Arizona.

Ramirez pleaded guilty in March to illegal control of an enterprise, counterfeiting and fraud schemes.

Two other people arrested on suspicion of participating in the scheme — Amiko Fountain, 43, and Marilyn Johnson, 54 — each pleaded guilty to one count of counterfeiting in November.

Fountain and Johnson helped operate the website site and ship the coupons, according to prosecutors who said the women each face up to 18 months in jail when they're sentenced May 8.

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Wisconsin woman sentenced to 10 years in prison for baby's death in 1957

By Brendan O'Brien

(Reuters) - A 76-year-old Wisconsin woman was sentenced on Wednesday to 10 years in prison for killing her infant daughter more than half a century ago, after the girl's brother persuaded police to reopen the case.

Ruby Klokow, who pleaded no contest to second-degree murder in February, was sentenced in Sheboygan County Circuit Court for the 1957 death of her daughter Jeaneen, who died at the age of seven months after being thrown onto a couch and falling onto the floor.

Sheboygan County Judge Angela Sutkiewicz handed down a much stiffer sentence than the one prosecutors recommended. Prosecutors reached a plea deal in February with Klokow and her attorney, recommending 45 days in jail with 10 years probation.

Klokow told police in 1957 that Jeaneen had fallen off a sofa after she placed her there, according the criminal complaint.

Klokow's son James, who was about 2 years old at the time of his sister's death, went to police in 2008 and told them that he and his brother Bruce were "subjected to repeated and extreme physical and mental abuse by their mother," according to the criminal complaint.

After the case was reopened, Klokow admitted that she had been frustrated and angry at the time. Both James and Jeaneen were crying and she had picked the girl up and threw her toward the sofa, but she bounced off and struck the floor, the complaint said.

James told investigators that Ruby blamed him for his sister's death, according to the complaint.

A pathologist also determined that Jeaneen's injuries could not have been caused merely by falling off a couch, according to the complaint.

(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Lisa Shumaker)

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Lawyer: Trauma drove woman who cut off man's penis

SANTA ANA, California (AP) — The defense attorney for a woman charged with severing the penis of her estranged husband said she "had a break from reality" the night of the attack.

"She's a shattered woman who tried to do the best she could," Frank Bittar, public defender for Catherine Kieu, said during closing arguments Thursday. But Bittar said Kieu's mental health woes increased and she broke, according to City News Service.

The jury received the case and is scheduled to begin deliberating Monday on charges of torture and aggravated mayhem for the July 11, 2011, incident when Kieu, 50, was accused of drugging her husband, cutting off his penis, and throwing in the garbage disposal.

Bittar said no one could condone what the victim went through. But he said Kieu had a childhood full of molestation and other trauma in war-torn Vietnam. He said that was compounded by her husband who constantly demanded sex in ways that put her in pain

The man is going only by his first name in court and is not being named by The Associated Press because of the nature of the attack.

In its closing arguments, the prosecution said Kieu was blinded by jealous anger after her husband asked for a divorce and began seeing an ex-girlfriend.

"They say anger is the wind that blows out the candle of the mind," Orange County Deputy District Attorney John Christl said.

The 60-year-old victim, who was not able to have the penis reattached, graphically described the attack during the trial and testified he felt as though he had been murdered.

Kieu could get life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted.

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Woman arrested for approaching Hugh Jackman with electric razor: police

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Officers arrested a woman for stalking after she wielded an electric razor while approaching Australian actor Hugh Jackman at a New York City gym, police said on Sunday.

Katherine Thurston, 47, went into the gym where Jackman was working out early on Saturday morning, and after a brief encounter with the 44-year-old actor, she fled and was arrested a few blocks away, a New York police spokeswoman said.

Thurston shouted that she loved the actor before throwing the electric razor, which was filled with hair clippings, at Jackman, who was not injured, local radio station and CBS affiliate 1010 WINS reported. Police officials said they could not confirm those details about the incident.

Jackman told officers that Thurston has been following him and his family for some time, police said.

"I suppose for me the primary concern is my family, obviously," Jackman, who plays Wolverine in the "X-Men" superhero film series, told the station. "But, you know, here's a woman who obviously needs help, so I just hope she gets the help she needs."

Thurston, who police said was charged with fourth-degree stalking was awaiting her arraignment on Sunday and could not be reached for comment.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis and Bill Trott)

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Woman in Berlusconi sex trial denounces tactics

MILAN (AP) — The Moroccan woman at the center of ex-Premier Silvio Berlusconi's sex-for-hire trial held an unusual protest Thursday in front of Milan's courthouse, accusing investigators of waging psychological warfare against her and manipulating her testimony during interrogations.

Karima el-Mahroug, better known as Ruby, read out a tearful, six-page statement denying that she was a prostitute, insisting that she had never had sex with Berlusconi and demanding that the court hear her side of the story.

"I have nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to hide," el-Mahroug said. She denounced what she called "psychological torture" directed at her by people pretending to help her and also accused the media of defaming her.

The 21-year-old also admitted, however, that she had lied in the past to hide her poverty-stricken origins.

The 76-year-old Berlusconi is accused of having paid for sex with el-Mahroug while she was a teenager during his infamous "bunga-bunga" parties at his villa near Milan, and then trying to cover it up. Both deny sexual contact.

El-Mahroug's protest came at a politically sensitive time for Italy, as Berlusconi's center-right party seeks to muscle its way into a governing coalition after coming in second in inconclusive February elections. Parliament is also poised to elect a new president in the coming weeks, a highly politicized process given that the new president will have a major role to play in calling new elections if no government can be formed among Italy's squabbling political blocs.

El-Mahroug has been the most pivotal character in Berlusconi's legal woes, a one-time nightclub dancer who left her family in Sicily as a young teen and ended up at dinner parties at the home of the Italian premier as his second marriage collapsed.

The scandal broke in 2010 when it emerged that Berlusconi had intervened with police on el-Mahroug's behalf after she was accused of stealing 3,000 euros from a friend and was detained by Milan police. Berlusconi said he intervened to avoid a diplomatic incident, thinking she was a relative of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's president at the time.

El-Mahroug on Thursday showed an old passport that identified her last name as "Mubarak" and said that bureaucratic error is why she often told lies and identified herself as a Mubarak relative. She apologized for having created such a "fantasy" but said she did it to escape the "poverty and suffering into which I was born and grew up in before leaving my family in Sicily."

In her only other lengthy comments about the case, el-Mahroug told a television interviewer in 2011 that Berlusconi had paid her 7,000 euros when she went to his home, but denied that she had had sex with him. She also admitted that she had told Berlusconi she was 24 when she was only 17.

El-Mahroug lashed out Thursday at prosecutors, saying they were the source of her suffering for having identified her as a prostitute "even though I always denied having had sex for money, especially with Silvio Berlusconi."

She described being "a victim of an investigative style in which promises were made and never kept ... a method of incessant questioning about my intimate life, my sexual propensities, my lovers, without ever taking into account the discomfort that this would cause in a 17-year-old."

El-Mahroug said much of what she told prosecutors was never included in the official record, particularly when it became clear that she wouldn't accuse Berlusconi of having had sex with her.

"And that's when the subliminal intimidations began, the insults from people who had helped me: real live psychological torture," she said.

She said, given that she was so pivotal to the case, she couldn't understand why prosecutors wouldn't call her as a witness in the trial. She didn't respond when reporters noted that she had been on Berlusconi's defense list as a witness but was in Mexico when she was called to testify in December.

She was twice fined for missing court dates, and by the time she returned in January, Berlusconi's lawyers had changed their strategy and decided they didn't need to hear from her.

Berlusconi has frequently lashed out at what he calls politically-motivated cases against him mounted by Milan magistrates.

___

Winfield reported from Rome.

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Alaska woman acquitted of murdering husband

PALMER, Alaska (AP) — A jury acquitted an Alaska woman who shot her husband six times as he slept, killing him, after she said the man held her against her will and tortured her for three days.

A Palmer jury on Tuesday found Lisa Donlon not guilty on all counts after several days of deliberations following a four-week trial, according to KTUU-TV (http://is.gd/PomdRg). Donlon was charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.

She shot her husband, Jason Donlon, once in the head and five times in the back with a .45-caliber handgun while he slept Oct. 7, 2010. The mother of three called 911 to report the shooting.

The defense argued Jason Donlon had been raping and torturing his wife for three days. They say he was keeping her against her will in a cabin or storage shed in Butte, about 40 miles northeast of Anchorage.

Prosecutors argued the killing was non-confrontational, and they said that while medical records showed evidence of scrapes and bruises there was nothing to indicate Lisa Donlon had been tortured.

A grand jury initially declined to indict Donlon but reconsidered after prosecutors presented new evidence.

Her lawyer argued that she was a victim of domestic violence and the shooting was justified.

The Donlons married in South Carolina in 1995, and court papers show trouble in their marriage when they were living in Eagle River in 2006. That year she obtained a restraining order against her husband and doctors documented her injuries.

In a petition for the restraining order, she said he became enraged when she announced she wanted a divorce.

"He packed his things, told the kids 'bye,'" she wrote. "Twenty minutes later he came back with his two loaded guns. He was trying to force me to call the police because he wanted to be shot by police officers so it wouldn't look like a suicide."

She wrote that her husband had pointed a gun to her chest before, had thrown her out of the house with no clothes on — an event she said was witnessed by one of their sons. She also stated that her husband had choked her unconscious.

She said she didn't call police because she was scared.

"I have a feeling that he would use his guns easily, and I don't want to create any situation that would trigger that," she wrote.

Two days after she obtained the restraining order, Jason Donlon, who was a computer technician for the Alaska Army National Guard, filed for divorce, seeking custody of the children.

The couple soon reconciled and were living in a small building behind the home of his mother and stepfather.

Defense Attorney Zachary Renfro said that while Donlon was in jail she had weekly visits from her three sons. He said the next step is to work on a plan to reunite her with her children.

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Information from: KTUU-TV, http://www.ktuu.com

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Obama appoints first woman Secret Service director

Mar 26 (Reuters) - Leading money winners on the 2013 PGATour on Monday (U.S. unless stated): 1. Tiger Woods $3,787,600 2. Brandt Snedeker $2,859,920 3. Matt Kuchar $2,154,500 4. Steve Stricker $1,820,000 5. Phil Mickelson $1,650,260 6. Hunter Mahan $1,553,965 7. John Merrick $1,343,514 8. Dustin Johnson $1,330,507 9. Russell Henley $1,313,280 10. Kevin Streelman $1,310,343 11. Keegan Bradley $1,274,593 12. Charles Howell III $1,256,373 13. Michael Thompson $1,254,669 14. Brian Gay $1,171,721 15. Justin Rose $1,155,550 16. Jason Day $1,115,565 17. Chris Kirk $1,097,053 18. ...

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Police question Israeli about attack on Arab woman

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli police say they have questioned a 17-year-old Israeli girl from a West Bank Jewish settlement suspected of participating in a group attack on a Palestinian woman last week at a Jerusalem train station.

Jerusalem Police Chief Yossi Parienty told Israeli reporters Sunday that the Palestinian woman told police that Israeli women spit on her, attacked her and ripped off her headscarf. A bystander photographed the incident and the photos were publicized widely in Israeli media.

Relations between Israelis and Palestinians in Jerusalem are tense. There have been similar attacks between the two groups on Jerusalem's light rail.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld says the suspect is in police custody and police are looking for two other female suspects.

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