Ambulance driver gets prison term of 46 months for fraud
Ivan Tkach, 30 years of age, was recently sentenced to 46 months in prison for his role in what authorities said was a scheme to defraud Medicare and the U.S. government.
According to federal authorities, Tkach pleaded guilty back in January, admitting that he gave false statements in his application for reinstatement to the Medicare program in 2009 and paid illegal kickbacks to a secretary at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, all in relation to a private ambulance company’s involvement in a health care fraud scheme. In addition to the prison term, U.S. District William H. Yohn, Jr. ordered Tkach to pay restitution in the amount of $1.26 million to Medicare and ordered three years’ supervised release.
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Former bank manager agrees to plead guilty to theft charge
The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced the filing of a one-count criminal information charging Kimberly D. Laird with stealing $78,594 from PNC Bank while working as manager of one of the bank’s branches.
According to United States Attorney Peter J. Smith, the information alleges that Laird stole the funds between January 2005 and November 2011 through a number of means: she opened credit accounts in her father’s name without authorization and disbursed funds to herself; she made redemptions from certificates of deposit accounts of five customers and withdrew the funds for her personal use; and she opened checking accounts in other names and wrote checks to pay her personal bills and expenses. According to the information, Laird stole funds from certificate of deposit accounts of four customers whose ages ranged from 81 to 89 years. Under the terms of the plea agreement filed with the Information, Laird agreed to plead guilty to stealing the funds and to pay restitution for the losses.
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Coach charged with child pornography production and interstate extortion
The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced that a 28-year-old man was indicted by a federal grand jury for producing and attempting to produce child pornography and for interstate extortion.
According to United States Attorney Peter J. Smith, the grand jury alleges that Joseph J. Ostrowski, a football coach at Holy Redeemer High School, persuaded and enticed, and attempted to persuade and entice, a minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing a visual depiction of such conduct.
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Video documenting “Obama’s sustained out-of-control spending”
A new web video has been released called “Declined,” documenting what Republicans say is Obama’s sustained out-of-control spending that has created historic federal budget deficits and has caused our national debt to skyrocket.
According to the Republican Party of Pennsylvania, Obamas last three and a half years in office have been characterized by a never ending line of broken promises and a failure to get federal spending under control. While President Obama promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term, he instead racked up the three highest budget deficits in history. Moreover, under President Obama, we’ve seen the most rapid increase in debt under any United States president, a debt which now stands at a staggering $15 trillion. President Obama’s out-of-control spending is not only unsustainable; his record creates a sharp contrast with Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s commitment to turnaround Washington spending and create a culture of fiscal sanity and strength.
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Survey says growing national impact of asthma
An estimated 29.1 million adults (12.7 percent) have been diagnosed with asthma in their lifetimes, and 18.7 million (8.2 percent) still had asthma, according to 2010 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The report, Asthma’s Impact on the Nation, is the first state-by-state data gathered using the Asthma Call-back Survey, an in-depth survey conducted among people with asthma identified by the CDC Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System.
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Owners of restaurant chain charged with cheating more than $15 million from IRS
According to federal authorities, Robert Mattei, Leo McGlynn, Brian Welsh, Joseph Donnelly, and Elena Ruiz—the owners and managers of the Nifty Fifty’s restaurant chain—were charged by information in a tax evasion conspiracy that cheated the Internal Revenue Service by failing to properly account for more than $15 million in gross receipts.
Authorities said the defendants – Mattei, 73 years of age; McGlynn, 52 years of age; Welsh, 48 years of age; Donnelly, 49 years of age; and Ruiz, 46 years of age, – are charged with conspiracy to commit tax evasion and tax evasion for allegedly constructing a long-running scheme to avoid paying millions of dollars in personal and employment taxes as related to their restaurant chain.
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Your national weather outlook for Thursday
After several days of warm and moderately muggy conditions over much of the Eastern U.S., A cold front moving in from the Great Lakes Region will bring a welcomed return of cooler and less humid weather for the end of the week. The warm and humid weather is expected to continue for Florida, along with scattered to numerous showers and thunderstorms.
Out west, an upper-level trough moving onshore over the Pacific Northwest, along with disorganized shortwave energy aloft, is forecast to move to the Great basin by Friday. The frontal boundary should move from the Northern Rockies to the Northern Plains while extending southwestward to southern Nevada by Friday. In the warm sector of this system, an area of showers and storms will likely develop over the upper Midwest on Thursday and move into the upper Great Lakes region by Friday morning.
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7-day forecast
Today, sunny, with a high near 70. North wind around 8 mph. Tonight, mostly clear, with a low around 43. North wind around 6 mph becoming east.
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Armed robber gets prison sentence for 37 years
Federal authorities said that John Gassew, 25 years of age, was sentenced to 37 years in prison for armed robberies he committed in December 2007 and October 2009. On December 9, 2007, authorities said Gassew robbed a bar, threatening the employees and patrons with a gun and stealing the establishment’s cash proceeds; on October 28, 2009, Gassew is said to have robbed a convenience store of cash proceeds and cigarettes.
A federal jury convicted Gassew on February 1 of two counts of armed robberies and two counts of using and carrying a firearm during a crime of violence.
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Study: Sundown Syndrome-like symptoms in fruit flies may be due to high dopamine levels
Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania researchers have discovered a mechanism involving the neurotransmitter dopamine that switches fruit fly behavior from being active during the day (diurnal) to nocturnal. This change parallels a human disorder in which increased agitation occurs in the evening hours near sunset and may also be due to higher than normal dopamine levels in the brain. Sundown syndrome occurs in older people with dementia or cognitive impairment.
Many geriatricians have noted an association between sundown syndrome and changes in the internal biological clock among people with dementia, observing disruptions in their sleep-wake cycles. The internal clock, which guides rhythms over a 24-hour day, is connected to how active humans are at different times of the day.
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