News and notes from Reston (tm).

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

This Week in Crime: Lifestyles of the Fraudlently Rich and Infamous

The man arrested earlier in the month for a three-state stabbing spree spent some time in Reston.

According to the website USSearch.com, Elias Abuelazam, 33, also once resided in Reston, in an apartment on the 12000 block of Greywing Square, although the time frame of his residence there is unknown.
Meanwhile, Reston's own Jersey Shore wannabe, Lloyd Woodson, who was arrested with a cache of weapons in Branchburg, N.J., back in January, had a day in court.
Lloyd Woodson, 44, of Reston, Va., was in state Superior Court Judge Paul Armstrong’s courtroom in Somerville today for a status conference on charges stemming from the January incident.

The Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office has accused Woodson of multiple offenses, including second-degree attempted armed robbery and possession of a firearm for an unlawful purpose.

Defense lawyer James Wronko said a psychiatrist’s report indicated Woodson is competent to stand trial, but he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, “which rendered him incapable of committing the crimes he’s charged with.”

After court, Wronko said the psychiatrist “will give an opinion that because Mr. Woodson suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, he should be found not guilty by reason of insanity because he wasn’t capable of acting with the mental state required to make his actions criminal.”
Sadly, another international abduction has been in the news.
One year ago, Douglass Berg, of Reston, said goodbye to his son and daughter before they boarded a flight with his ex-wife on what was supposed to be a three-week visit to her native Japan. He has not seen the children since.

Berg told The Washington Examiner that his ex-wife "felt like I was invading her turf" by sharing custody of Gunnar, now age 10, and Kianna, 9, after their divorce. She thought child care was a mom's responsibility.
One of the founders of the Buffalo Wing Factory chain of restaurants was sentenced to 12 years in prison for a $71 million loan scam.
A Loudoun County man who rose from a teenage employee at a Sterling deli to own a string of area restaurants, and who by his own account fraudulently borrowed more than $71 million from eight banks, was sentenced Friday to 12 years in prison.

Last year, when it all came crashing down for Osama M. El-Atari, 31, he fled the country, authorities said. The Ashburn resident left behind a string of creditors, flashy sports cars and a $3.9 million house bought with money he scammed from banks in Virginia, Maryland, Tennessee and Ohio, court records show.
Note to all you would-be junior scammers out there: If you manage to flee the country while facing multiple felony charges, do not come back to hang out at a Ferrari dealership. That is all.

Finally, apparently there's a problem with people smoking pot on Reston trails. Who knew? We just see people jogging and walking their dogs.

2 comments:

  1. Lol - the comments on the Patch article are pretty funny...especially if you catch them before they are censored and deleted - how very Reston boardlike of them...

    http://reston.patch.com/articles/safety-just-one-of-the-issues

    ReplyDelete
  2. I picture the author of the Reston Patch article as Helen Lovejoy from the Simpsons.

    "Wont somebody think of the children!?"

    ReplyDelete

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