Washington, DC - Capt. Neill’s Seafood Inc. (Capt. Neill’s) of Columbia, North Carolina, and Phillip R. Carawan, the owner, President, and Chief Executive of Capt. Neill’s, were sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Louise Flanagan, in New Bern, North Carolina. Capt. Neill’s was sentenced to a period of five years’ probation and is required to pay a $500,000 fine. Carawan was sentenced to 12 months and one day in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, and is required to pay a $250,000 fine for his role in falsely labeling millions of dollars’ worth of foreign crab meat as “Product of USA.”

New York - Eric Dreiband, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and William F. Sweeney Jr., the Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Office of the FBI announced Thursday that Grafton Thomas has been indicted by a federal grand jury with five counts of willfully causing bodily injury to five victims because of the victims’ religion and five counts of obstructing the free exercise of religion in an attempt to kill, federal hate crimes, related to his alleged machete attack during Hanukkah observances at a rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York, on the night of December 28, 2019.

Houston, Texas - Jorge Costilla-Sanchez pleaded guilty to an international drug trafficking conspiracy to distribute cocaine and marijuana into the United States.

Houston, Texas - A former general manager and partial owner of a Florida-based energy company was sentenced to 48 months in prison Wednesday for his role in a scheme to corruptly secure contracts from Venezuela’s state-owned and state-controlled energy company, Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA).

Brooklyn, New York - Thursday, at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn, Asia Siddiqui was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment by United States District Judge Sterling Johnson Jr. for her role in planning to build a bomb for use in a terrorist attack in the United States. Siddiqui and her co-defendant, Noelle Velentzas, pleaded guilty on Aug. 23, 2019, to a charge of teaching or distributing information pertaining to the making and use of an explosive, destructive device, or weapon of mass destruction in furtherance of a planned federal crime of violence.  Velentzas is awaiting sentencing.

Norfolk, Virginia - A Norfolk man has pleaded guilty to conspiring to unlawfully sell prescription drugs to consumers without valid prescriptions, the Department of Justice announced Wednesday.