codefendant Archives - Home Safety Tech Pros

Codefendant of ex-MLB player admits to role in shooting

homesafetytechpros — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 22:33:58 +0000

Left, center: Samantha Scott, Danny Serafini (Placer County Jail). Right: Serafini pictured exiting a plane in handcuffs following his extradition from Nevada to California (Placer County Sheriff’s Office).

The co-defendant of a former MLB player has admitted to her role in the deadly shooting of the baseball player’s in-laws in their California home.

Samantha Maria Scott, 34, pleaded guilty on Feb. 6 to a charge of being an accessory to a felony in the shootings of Robert Gary Spohr, 70, and Wendy Louise Wood, 68. Scott’s co-defendant, former MLB pitcher Daniel “Danny” Joseph Serafini, 51, is set for a jury trial in the case in March.

Robert Spohr was the father of Erin Spohr, Serafini’s wife. Scott was reportedly a friend of Erin Spohr’s and the family’s former nanny.

Spohr was fatally shot on June 5, 2021, at his Lake Tahoe-area residence. Deputies found him dead from a single gunshot wound. His wife had also been shot but was taken to a hospital, where she recovered from her injuries. She died by suicide a year later.

After the initial shooting incident, the Placer County Sheriff’s Office shared two videos of a “hooded male wearing a face-covering and a backpack walking to the residence several hours before the homicide occurred,” Law&Crime reported. One of the videos showed a man with a backpack outside the Spohrs’ residence, and the second added footage of the suspect walking on a sidewalk by water.

“The information and evidence detectives gathered led them to identify Serafini and Scott as the suspects; both suspects are known to each other and to the victims,” authorities said.

Serafini and Scott, described as a close friend of Serafini’s wife, were eventually arrested.

Serafini made a name for himself as an MLB pitcher, but after his professional career ended, his apparent financial woes began. The former bar owner appeared with his wife on the show Bar Rescue. One episode, “Take Me Out to the Bar Game,” which aired in 2015, began with the story of how Serafini’s $14 million earnings from his playing career dwindled after a series of failed investments and a “bitter divorce,” a situation only made worse by the nosedive in the success of what was then known as The Bullpen at Aspen Glen, located in Sparks, Nevada.

On the episode, Erin Spohr is heard commenting about how she noticed a change in Serafini’s personality and missed her old husband, as the failing bar left him $300,000 in debt and in danger of losing his parents’ home.

“My parents were so proud of me at one time for being a successful baseball player and now I’m thinking what a disappointment I am to everybody,” Danny Serafini is also heard saying on the episode, his voice quivering.

After the bar’s makeover, the establishment was renamed Oak Tavern, but it has since closed. A 2016 tweet from the Oak Tavern’s account on X claimed the show “screwed the pooch big time lol.”

Adrienne Spohr, Erin Spohr’s sister and the daughter of Robert Spohr and Wendy Wood, filed a wrongful-death lawsuit in June 2023 against the defendants and her sister. In the lawsuit, Adrienne Spohr accused them of “malicious, despicable, cruel, and unjust conduct” making them liable for damages after the “senseless murder” of Robert Gary Spohr and the eventual death of Wood.

“My parents had been incredibly generous to Daniel Serafini and Erin Spohr throughout their marriage,” she said. “Despite being pressed for my opinion, I cannot comment on my sister’s level of involvement at this time.”

In a countersuit, Erin Spohr, who has not been charged in the murders, alleges her sister manipulated their mother to cut her out of the inheritance.

Scott’s sentencing date has not been set.

Matt Naham contributed to this report.

Source link

The post Codefendant of ex-MLB player admits to role in shooting appeared first on Home Safety Tech Pros.

Trump co-defendant wants DA Willis out in Georgia RICO case

homesafetytechpros — Tue, 09 Jan 2024 14:38:25 +0000

Left: Michael Roman; Right: Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis speaks on Aug. 14, 2023, in Atlanta (Fulton County Jail mug shot; AP Photo/John Bazemore)

A co-defendant in the Georgia racketeering (RICO) case against former President Donald Trump claims the Fulton County district attorney “has engaged in an improper, clandestine personal relationship” with the lead prosecutor overseeing the matter.

Michael Roman was a senior staff member for Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign. Prosecutors in the Peach State claim he played a relevant, criminal, role in the fake or “contingent” electors scheme.

Monday marks the deadline for pretrial motions to be filed for many of the defendants in the election subversion conspiracy case.

In a 127-page filing, including a 39-page motion and dozens of pages of exhibits, Roman is asking the court to toss out the charges against him — and to bar both Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade from further involvement in the case.

The Roman motion begins by accusing Willis of improperly appointing Wade, who was also part of the process by which the state obtained the grand jury indictments in the case. The defense seeks a court “order striking the special purpose grand jury report and dismissing the criminal indictment in its entirety against Mr. Roman on the grounds that the entire prosecution is invalid and unconstitutional.”

The allegations of impropriety between Willis and Wade are the secondary argument advanced by Roman’s attorney, Ashleigh B. Merchant. They are not, however, offered in the alternative, and appear to be part-and-parcel of the broader defense effort.

Roman accuses the two prosecutors of having “been engaged in an improper, clandestine personal relationship” throughout the case which has allegedly led to both of them “profiting significantly from this prosecution at the expense of the taxpayers.”

In an “introduction,” the Roman motion alleges that Willis used COVID-19-related funds to prosecute the 45th president’s, and others’, efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.

The motion then quickly turns to the alleged impropriety of hiring “a private special prosecutor to preside over the case” on the basis that both Willis and Wade “have been profiting personally.”

“This case presents a unique opportunity for this Court to review this authority and determine if the district attorney here overstepped her legal discretion and authority and whether she and the special prosecutor violated the law and their obligations under the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct when they engaged in a personal, romantic relationship that has ultimately yielded substantial income to the special prosecutor,” the motion argues.

The motion goes on to allege that Willis has used the RICO case against Trump, Roman, and others “to pay her partner a large sum of money that was originally allotted to clear the backlog of cases in Fulton County following the Covid pandemic.”

In no uncertain terms, Roman’s motion seeks to highlight various allegedly lurid aspects of the relationship at issue:

The district attorney chose to appoint her romantic partner … Admittedly, this is a bold allegation considering it is directed to one of the most powerful people in the State of Georgia, the Fulton County District Attorney. Nevertheless, the district attorney’s fame and power do not change the fact that she decided to appoint as the special prosecutor a person with whom she had a personal relationship and who is now leading the day-to-day prosecution of this case. Even assuming this type of nepotism might be forgiven in the abstract, a review of the amount of money that the special prosecutor has been paid by the district attorney and the personal activities of the district attorney and the special prosecutor during the pendency of this prosecution shed light on just how self-serving this arrangement has been.

The filing goes on to cite as evidence of this alleged affair: open records requests regarding the lack of county approval for Wade’s appointment, an admission by Wade that his oath was not filed before working on the case, Wade’s ongoing divorce and the fact of the records being sealed in the case, and “[s]ources close to both the special prosecutor and the district attorney have confirmed they had an ongoing, personal relationship during the pendency of the special prosecutor’s divorce proceedings.”

Roman also attempts to make hay out of alleged travel that Willis and Wade have made together.

“While the filings in the divorce case are sealed by Court order (the legality of which is open to question), information obtained outside of court filings indicates that the district attorney and special prosecutor have traveled personally together to such places as Napa Valley, Florida and the Caribbean and the special prosecutor has purchased tickets for both of them to travel on both the Norwegian and Royal Caribbean cruise lines,” the filing reads. “Traveling together to such places as Washington, D.C. or New York City might make sense for work purposes in light of other pending litigation, but what work purpose could only be served by travel to this traditional vacation destinations?”

Aside from Willis’ alleged lack of authority to appoint Wade, Roman claims that the alleged conflict of interest violates his due process and fair trial rights under the Georgia and U.S. constitutions. The filing also alleges that Willis and Wade violated a county rule regarding conflicts of interest, as well as their professional ethical obligations as attorneys. Willis, Roman claims, also violated her oath of office.

Law&Crime reached out to the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office for comment on this story but no response was immediately forthcoming as of the time of publication.

Read Roman’s full filing below:

Have a tip we should know? [email protected]

Source link

The post Trump co-defendant wants DA Willis out in Georgia RICO case appeared first on Home Safety Tech Pros.

Judge acquits lawyer on insider trading charges after co-defendant found not guilty

homesafetytechpros — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 23:06:46 +0000

Criminal Justice

Judge acquits lawyer on insider trading charges after co-defendant found not guilty

By Debra Cassens Weiss

December 22, 2023, 10:30 am CST

A lawyer who was formerly on the faculty at Loyola University Chicago has persuaded a federal judge that he deserves a judgment of acquittal in an insider trading case because of inconsistent verdicts by the jury that had convicted him in January. Image from Shutterstock.

U.S. District Judge Manish S. Shah of the Northern District of Illinois entered a judgment of acquittal Tuesday for David Sargent, who had been a member of Loyola University Chicago’s School of Environmental Sustainability, Reuters reports.

The same jury that convicted Sargent had acquitted his friend and co-defendant Christopher Klundt, who was accused of tipping Sargent about nonpublic information regarding Chegg Inc., where Klundt was then a manager.

Sargent maintained that he was interested in Chegg stock because it was an online education company, and the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning. He had made other pandemic-related trades, according to Sargent’s March motion for acquittal filed in the Northern District of Illinois.

At trial, Klundt had denied passing along information. Klundt was acquitted of all charges, while Sargent was convicted on six counts of insider trading.

Source link

The post Judge acquits lawyer on insider trading charges after co-defendant found not guilty appeared first on Home Safety Tech Pros.