Browning Law News Blog

Prosecutors have criminally charged a homeless man and a New Jersey couple for misusing funds from a viral feel-good fundraising story that raised over $400,000 The homeless veteran Johnny Bobbitt Jr. claimed that Mark D'Amico and McClure misused the funds from the GoFundMe campaign that was meant for him after he used the last $20 bill to fill McClure's gas tank when she was stranded on the roadside in Philadelphia.   Burlington County District Attorney Scott Coffina told reporters this afternoon that the story Bobbitt told was a hoax.  Bobbitt, McClure, and D'Amico are each charged with second degree theft by deception and conspiracy to commit theft by deception. The charges could hold a sentence of 5-10 years in jail. Things started to go awry when Bobbitt sued the couple for allegedly withholding the $400,000 that the couple collected from the GoFundMe fundraiser. The full amount after the fees taken out from the site was around $367,000. An attorney a...

Anna Sorokin was a young, up and coming heiress who traveled in the best celebrity circles and left $100 tips as if it was pocket change. Behind all of the glitz and glamour was a con who fooled friends, banks, and hotels to see how the other half lived. Sorokin lived in luxury New York hotel rooms she couldn't afford and promised a friend an all-expense-paid trip abroad, but stuck her with the $62,000 bill. She also faked bank statements in an attempt to get a $22 million loan. Sorokin is on trial for grand larceny and theft of services charges alleging she swindled various people and businesses out of $275,000 within ten months. She claimed to be a wealthy German heiress with approximately $60 million being held abroad. Prosecutor Catherine McCaw said that Sorokin was born in Russia and doesn't have a cent to her name. Apparently, Sorokin never intended to commit a crime according to Sorokin's attorney Todd Spodek. Spodek said that she was easily seduced by the hi...

Civil rights attorney Larry Krasner was elected in a landslide last year and became the new district attorney of Philadelphia. Across the country, promises of reforming the criminal justice system had gotten many people elected as DA. However, when they do become elected, their reforms are slow and disappointing. Krasner ran his campaign on a platform of radical overhaul. In the three months, he has kept to his word. During his first week, he fired 31 prosecutors from the DA's office because they weren't committed to his changes. His next change was obeying a court order to release a list of 29 officers from the Philadelphia Police Department that were on a "do not call list", which means that they were tainted to the extent that they would be considered unreliable witnesses. The police officers on the list had either been charged with crimes or found responsible for misconduct including lying to their fellow investigators, filing false reports, using excessive fo...