Eastern District of California Blog

SK Foods Owner Salyer To Seek Bail Friday

Frederick Scott Salyer, who ran one of the nation's largest tomato processing operations until federal agents began to investigate him on bribery and racketeering charges, on Friday will appear in federal court in Sacramento asking to be let out on bail.

Salyer, former head of SK Foods, was arrested Feb. 5 and is being held without bail because the FBI says he was planning to flee overseas.

But his attorney has filed documents in U.S. District Court in Sacramento arguing that he is the victim of a vindictive former employee who made up the story after she stole $500,000 of his belongings -- and his dog -- from Salyer's Pebble Beach mansion.

"The detention order in New York and the no-bail warrant in this District were based entirely on the claims of a disgruntled former employee to the effect that Mr. Salyer intended to flee the United States in October 2009, hide money in these countries and reside in a country without extradition arrangements in this country," attorney Malcolm Segal wrote. "The allegations are false."

Sacramento Bee, 2/25/10.  The first big bail decision for new magistrate judge Kendall Newman.  [Updated and Expanded 2/26/10 Sac Bee Article]

Attorney Defends His 1000+ ADA Lawsuits In EDCA Fedral Court

A quadriplegic attorney who has filed more than 1,000 federal lawsuits claiming violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act says he's an agent of change.  But his critics choose different words.

Scott Johnson, 47, was disabled by a hit and run drunk driver in 1981.  For the past six years, Johnson has been on an ADA enforcement crusade that has potentially earned him millions of dollars.  He operates out of his home in Carmichael with a team of legal assistants.

A News10 analysis of federal court records in the Eastern District of California indicated Johnson has been the plaintiff in at least 1,079 ADA lawsuits since 2003.  Johnson said he hadn't kept count, but did not dispute the number.  He said his average settlement with business owners has been between $4,000 and $6,000.

"I'm an attorney and I enforce the Americans with Disabilities Act," Johnson explained outside the federal courthouse in Sacramento.  "It's been a law on the books now for 20 years.

News10.net

Chico News & Review Story, "Water Crusade"

A North State water agency has filed suit in federal court in Sacramento based on a 77-year-old state law that says water shall not be shipped from its area of origin unless and until the local water contractors’ thirsts have been quenched.

Tehama-Colusa Canal Authority represents the local contractors, 16 water districts in Glenn, Tehama, Colusa and Yolo counties. In its suit the TCCA charges that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has failed to follow a law passed in 1933 in connection with the creation of the Central Valley Project, then a state-sponsored undertaking. The project, which includes Shasta Dam, was designed to protect the valley from water shortages and floods. But in practice, it transports about 8 million acre-feet of water a year from the Sacramento and San Joaquin river systems to the San Joaquin Valley.

 Chico News & Review, 2/25/10

Today's New York Times Piece on SK Foods: "Bribes Let Tomato Vendor Sell Tainted Food"

I like the photo in this piece in today's New York Times, "Bribes Let Tomato Vendor Sell Tainted Food", on the SK Food's "Big Tomato" scandal and the RICO indictment against its owner Frederick Salyer.  This is probably the first EDCA case to be on the celebrity gossip website, celebrifi.com, though I don't know why.

SEC Charges Two Men With $10 Million Fraud

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged two Sacramento-area men with misappropriating approximately $10 million from more than 100 investors who were falsely promised that their money would be loaned to homebuyers and secured by real estate deeds of trust.

The SEC alleges that Lawrence “Lee” Loomis solicited investments in investment funds managed by his father-in-law John Hagener. Loomis told investors they were investing in safe “liquid high-yield accounts” that would earn 12 percent returns guaranteed by a third party. The SEC’s complaint alleges that Loomis and Hagener instead used the money primarily to prop up Loomis’ other failing businesses. The SEC further alleges that Loomis paid himself hundreds of thousands of dollars from companies that received investor money and Hagener received more than $190,000 for managing the funds even though he was misappropriating investors’ money to fund other businesses.

SEC Press Release, 2/23/10 and Sacramento Bee, 2/23/10

4th Guilty Plea In Conspiracy To Impersonate A Federal Officer To Recover Ponzi Scheme Proceeds

A Fair Oaks man accused of taking part in a bizarre scheme to recover money from an alleged $40 million Ponzi ring in Folsom has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to impersonate an officer, federal authorities reported.

Michael David Sanders, 42, was the fourth and final person to plead guilty in the case in which defendants admitted they tried unsuccessfully to recover funds for people who lost investments to the Ponzi ring, according to officials for the U.S. Attorney's office, the FBI and the IRS.

The Ponzi scheme allegedly was carried out by Anthony Vassallo, indicted last April on mail fraud, wire fraud and money laundering. Vassallo has pleaded not guilty.

Sacramento Bee, 2/21/10

Ex-Employee Alleges El Dorado Water Boss Coerced Her Into Sex

Threatened with the loss of her job, the former administrative manager of the El Dorado County Water Agency entered into a long-term sexual relationship with her boss, former agency General Manager William T. Hetland, the woman claims in a lawsuit filed Friday in Sacramento federal court.

The relationship evolved into three-way sex, commonly referred to as a ménage á trois, involving Cathy A. Monaghan, her husband, Daniel E. Monaghan II, and Hetland, Monaghan alleges in the suit filed on her behalf by civil rights attorney Johnny Griffin III.

"All of the sexual conduct and harassment that occurred between April 2006 and into August 2009 constitutes an intertwined pattern of continuing sexual harassment," the suit claims.

Monaghan, 53, was fired by the agency Sept. 29, after telling Hetland, 61, that he had subjected her to unbearable stress, leading to her abuse of alcohol, and that she wanted to discontinue their trysts, according to the suit.

 Sacramento Bee, 2/20/10

 

Court Denies Sekhon Defendants' Motions for New Trial and Judgment of Acquittal

At a hearing this morning, Judge Damrell denied the Sekhon defendants' motions for new trial and/or judgment of acquittal.  The only exception was Caza's motion for acquittal on count 11, which the court set for further briefing before decision.  

Environmental Groups File Lawsuit Against Utility To Protect Rams And Butterflies

A "completely unnecessary powerline project" that would run through rugged mountains, verdant valleys and pristine deserts of Eastern San Diego County spells trouble for the already endangered Peninsular bighorn sheep and the Quino checkerspot butterfly, environmentalists say in Sacramento Federal Court.

Courthouse News Service, 2/18/10; Civil Complaint, 2/16/10 

SK Foods Magnate Salyer Indicted On Racketeering Charges

California agribusiness magnate Frederick Scott Salyer was charged Thursday with running his company as a massive racketeering enterprise that routinely bribed food company executives, rigged bids and slapped false labels on old and moldy tomato products that families nationwide consumed.

A federal grand jury in Sacramento indicted Salyer on Thursday after a nearly four-year probe of his Monterey-based SK Foods LP, which controlled up to 20 percent of the Central Valley's tomato crop.

The highly unusual move to characterize SK Foods as a racketeering enterprise stems in part from federal agents' belief that as many as two dozen of the company's executives knew about the criminal nature of its business.

Sacramento Bee, 2/19/10; see also LA Times, 2/19/10