The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas yesterday allowed a land exchange to proceed between the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and SpaceX in South Texas. The court denied a preliminary injunction request, finding that the plaintiffs failed to establish an injury in fact to support standing and they failed to establish irreparable harm. 

A federal jury in the Northern District of Indiana convicted Anthony Mayers, 36, of Gary, Indiana, of four counts of trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion and other related charges.

The Justice Department, on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), lodged a proposed settlement agreement with medical equipment sterilizer Steri-Tech Inc. yesterday to resolve allegations that it violated the Clean Air Act and related federal and Commonwealth of Puerto Rico regulations at its Salinas, Puerto Rico, sterilization facility. Under the proposed settlement, Steri-Tech will pay a $700,000 civil penalty and destroy its emissions of ethylene oxide by 99.99%. 

Olamide Shanu, 35, a Nigerian national, pleaded guilty yesterday in the District of Idaho to charges related to his role in several cyber-enabled schemes that defrauded approximately 150 American victims and caused millions of dollars in losses. Shanu made more than $2,500,000 from these fraud schemes.

Dave Shumpert III, 30, of Des Moines, Iowa, was sentenced today in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa to life in prison after being found guilty by a jury on June 11 of charges related to sex trafficking, distribution of a controlled substance, and obstruction.

An indictment was unsealed today charging a former postman with the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) with unlawful secretion, destruction, and delay of mail after he allegedly unlawfully threw away mail that he was entrusted to deliver – including approximately 300 mail-in ballots to registered voters in Utah.

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division announced today its finding that the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine (UCSF Medical School) discriminated based on race in granting and denying admission to its 2023-2025 incoming classes. UCSF Medical School’s discriminatory conduct violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA), which banned race discrimination in higher education.

Crown Medical Solutions LLC (Crown) and its owners, Michelle and Philanzo King, have agreed to pay $825,000 to resolve allegations that Crown and its owners violated the False Claims Act by submitting false claims for payment to Medicare. 

Javier Aguilar, 52, a Mexican national living in Houston, Texas, and a former oil trader, was sentenced in Brooklyn, New York, to four years in prison for his role in two separate schemes to bribe foreign officials in Ecuador and Mexico. He was also ordered to pay $7.13 million in forfeiture and a $100,000 fine.

Tomás Niembro Concha, 64, a Spanish and Venezuelan national, the former chief executive officer of Nodus International Bank (Nodus Bank), a Puerto Rican international bank, was sentenced to 112 months in prison and three years of supervised release. Niembro led a scheme to fraudulently obtain at least $24.9 million from Nodus Bank and conspired to evade U.S. sanctions against Venezuela. Niembro was ordered to forfeit over $16.9 million, which represents the value of the proceeds he derived from the wire fraud conspiracy.

Today, the Department of Justice announced agreements with two of the nation’s largest health care systems—New York University Langone Hospitals (“NYU”) and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (“UPMC”)—that resolve investigations into potential violations of federal law arising from their provision of sex-rejecting procedures on children, often euphemistically referred to as “gender-affirming care.” Under the agreements, NYU and UPMC will cease providing these dangerous interventions to minors, which include administering puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and performing surgical

Today, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel released a legal opinion concluding that the federal prohibition may not be enforced against licensed dealers selling handguns to otherwise law-abiding adults ages 18 to 20 consistent with the Second Amendment.