The former pastor of a Greenwich church sentenced in July for federal obstruction of justice has reported to a Brooklyn, N.Y., prison, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Michael Moynihan, 59, who was sentenced to five months in jail followed by two years of supervised release, is now at the Metropolitan Detention Center. Located near Gowanus Bay, the prison is classified as an administrative facility, a type of institution intended for the detention of pretrial offenders, dangerous or escape-prone inmates, or for treatment of inmates with medical problems, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The Brooklyn facility is capable of holding male and female inmates in all security categories. Moynihan was to report to prison Sept. 3; a prison employee on Thursday would not confirm when he reported. Moynihan resigned from St. Michael the Archangel Roman Catholic Church in 2007 amid allegations he diverted hundreds of thousands of dollars in church funds to pay for personal expenses. He pleaded guilty in December 2011 to the obstruction charge, which stemmed from lies he told federal officials investigating the possible misappropriation of funds. He met with FBI agents to provide information about how the funds were spent and, in a December 2010 interview, told agents he had not forged a signature on a letter, although he knew he signed another person's name without the authority to do so, according to the U.S. Attorney's office. An investigation by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport found in 2008 that Moynihan could not account for church money he kept in secret accounts and engaged in a pattern of deception when confronted. Moynihan also provided false and misleading information to accountants retained by the diocese, according to the U.S. Attorney's office. Though most of approximately $2 million in expenditures from two accounts went toward documented legitimate expenses or expenses that appeared to be appropriate, Moynihan used about $300,000 in church funds to pay his credit card bills, authorities said. Attorney Audrey Felsen, who represents Moynihan with attorney Mark Sherman, said after Moynihan's sentencing that about $300,000 has not been accounted for to the diocese's satisfaction. Moynihan must pay over $400,000 in restitution to the diocese and must complete 120 hours of community service as part of his sentence. david.hennessey@scni.com; 203-625-4428 Send Books to Inmates www.sureshotbooks.com

Hacker who infected 72K computers gets prison sentence

Joshua Schichtel pled guilty for selling botnets to customers "who wanted to infect computers with various different types of malicious software." Now, he's serving a 30-month prison term. After pleading guilty last year to creating a botnet that wreaked havoc on about 72,000 computers, Joshua Schichtel was sentenced to prison today. The Department of Justice announced that Schichtel received a 30-month prison sentence for "selling command-and-control access to and use of thousands of malware-infected computers." Schichtel was a unique hacker. Rather than infecting computers for his own benefit, he instead sold botnets to customers who must have not had the tech know-how to create their own malware. "Individuals who wanted to infect computers with various different types of malicious software (malware) would contact Schichtel and pay him to install, or have installed, malware on the computers that comprised those botnets," the Department of Justice wrote in a statement today. It's not clear how many total customers Schichtel had or how many computers were infected since he was only caught dealing with one customer. This customer paid him a meager fee of $1,500 to get malicious software installed on roughly 72,000 computers. According to Ars Technica, Schichtel has a history of hacking. Before he was caught in the Washington, D.C. area in 2009 infecting the 72,000 computers, he was named in a 2004 complaint for "conspiring to use thousands of infected computers to launch Distributed Denial of Service attacks against e-commerce websites." Those charges were reportedly dismissed because the government didn't get an indictment before deadline. Several botnet creators and hackers have been captured or sentenced in the past year, including the notorious Bredolab virus creator, who was credited with infecting 30 million computers worldwide, and the crew of LulzSec hackers that allegedly broke into corporate networks, stole data, and defaced Web sites. However, cybercrime is still on the rise as lawmakers work to catch up with increasingly creative and complex cyber-schemes. According to a report released this week, any device that connects to the Internet is in danger of some sort of worm, virus, Trojan, or malicious spam. Once Schichtel finishes his prison term, he will also have to serve three years of supervised release.

California Realignment Picture Comes into Focus

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California became the primary guinea pig in the prison industry after federal judges ordered the cash-strapped state to reduce its prison population within two years, starting in May of 2011, due to unsafe levels of prison overcrowding, a ruling later upheld by the Supreme Court. In the post-financial-collapse world where many states are considering cuts to law enforcement and correctional facilities that would have seemed unthinkable in more stable financial times, all eyes are on the Golden State, and you can bet most politicians will be referencing statistics and stories from California for the next few years while making their arguments for one policy or another. State politicians responded to the judges’ order with realignment, which basically consists of sending “less serious offenders,” those sentenced to less than three years, back to the county level, along with some of the funding the state was using to house them in prison. This policy only applies to offenders convicted after the law was changed. Given that the state couldn’t afford to house all its prisoners with a level of supervision and safety that the feds found acceptable, most observers have concluded that this move will essentially force law enforcement to change priorities on whom they arrest and how they sentence or encourage them to send more offenders to probation or electronic monitoring programs instead of jail. The new law also places these prisoners on probation when released, instead of parole. The main distinction is that small parole violations used to send prisoners immediately back to prison with no new trial, which will no longer be the case. New crimes committed by recently released prisoners will now have to be tried as separate cases. A recent report from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice explains the state’s prison population was cut by 39 percent in the first nine months after realignment. This means the state is two-thirds of the way to achieving its mandated goal of reducing the prison population by 40,000 inmates by 2013. The state is clearly making progress in its effort to reduce prison overcrowding, but many people believe this isn’t necessarily a good thing. After the Supreme Court’s ruling, many local law enforcement officials in the state characterized it as a case of accepting a leap in crime rates and a different standard of law enforcement in exchange for budget balancing and keeping the feds off the state’s back. There is little argument about the fact that crime rates go up when more people are released from prison, but what about recidivism rates? You would expect that if the criminal justice system randomly releases certain prisoners because of overcrowding, the rate of successful rehabilitation of prisoners would go down, as the prisoners are serving more of their time in jails or probation programs that weren’t designed to hold them for long periods of times. Interestingly, the first report by the Chief Probation Officers of California, released in late July, indicates that less than four percent of felons failed to report to their probation officers in the first six-month period post-realignment. Comparatively, 14 percent of inmates were listed as fugitives after not reporting to their parole officers under the old system. Marin County Chief Probation Officer Michael Daly told the Associated Press he suspected this change was due to the fact that recently released felons could now earn their release from probationary supervision after only six months of avoiding probation violations, compared to a year-long wait before. Daly argued that this provides a motivation for ex-felons to behave. “We’ve hung out a pretty good carrot there,” Daly commented. There has also been a change in the proactive work done by probation departments. Many departments now contact prisoners nearing release in an effort to prepare them for life outside of jail. Some departments even help inmates secure jobs and/or housing before they exit custody. One interesting side effect of realignment has been the way different judges and district attorneys have responded to it. Law enforcement has usually been thought of as a moral issue rather than a fiscal issue in our country, but now these officials find themselves in a place where the financial well-being of their county might be directly related to how much they throw the book at criminals. Some officials say they don’t think about their county’s bottom line when making decisions about how to charge or sentence offenders, but others say they don’t have a choice. In cash-strapped areas with outdated and overcrowded jails, giving a jail bed to a drug addict may mean having to release a habitual domestic violence offender. Results from the probation study found that judges and prosecutors have increased their usage of sentences where certain offenders begin serving their time in jail, but later move to other programs like house arrest. Although most counties haven’t released their own statistics on things like recidivism rates, San Bernardino County was quick to point out its success in transitioning to the new model. Chris Condon, spokesman for the county’s probation department, said the state recidivism rate was 67.5, while San Bernardino’s was 82.55 percent before realignment. He happily explained the rate was now 22 percent in his county. Interestingly enough, the probation representative said he didn’t think judges or prosecutors in his county were changing their sentencing practices and that most of the improvements were made on the back end, by changing how prisoners were treated when they were released. Condon attributed this success to a combination of having good electronic monitoring systems and other probation tools already in place, along with the department hiring 107 additional employees in the time since realignment was announced. Condon said his county used the funding from the state to add these employees, make sure every substation had a probation officer assigned to it, and increase the size of domestic violence, gang, and sexual violence units. Condon said collaborative agreements with health and human services departments were expanded, in addition to law enforcement. Having survived this particular sea-change, Condon said the next concern on the horizon is that the state might try to move more juvenile corrections responsibilities to the county level. He also commented that crime rates went up overall since realignment began, but there was no direct correlation to the recent changes. Condon said the rise in crime could just as easily be attributed to the bad economy. Meanwhile, the state recently formed a new agency, the Board of State and Community Corrections, to monitor the effects of realignment. The Los Angeles Times predicted that by mid-August one outcome the board might find is that the current rate of prison population reduction won’t get the state to its court-ordered benchmarks on time. Last October, the prison population was falling by 4,000 inmates a month, a rate that has fallen dramatically to less than 1,000 per month. Needless to say, the state is currently on target to miss its prison population benchmark, despite all the changes made so far.

SureShot Books Send an Inmate a Catalog

PRLog (Press Release) - Aug 30, 2012 - Send an Inmate a Catalog, which will allow them to forward you items that they may like from our catalog, so you can purchase for them or redeem our Gift Certificate for their own purchase. When you purchase our Gift Certificate for an inmate, we forward them a card ( saying you have receive a $50 Gift Certificate, from: Name / Address and you may include a message) along with a code that they will enter on the order form on catalog for payment. If they do not purchase items for full amount, there will remain a credit for future purchases. Please note: Print catalogs does not show all items that we carry or that are on web-site. Print Catalogs are only send to Inmate's and Correctional Facilities. http://sureshotbooks.com/request_catalog.php Based on studies made by the US Department of Corrections, an inmate that takes the opportunity to improve their education while incarcerated has a much better chance of reintegrating into society and becoming a productive contributing member of society. Providing books for prisoners is an effective method of helping them to improve their lives. SureShot Books makes it possible for family and friends of prison inmates to send books to prisoners as well as sending magazines to inmates and we also have newspapers available from all states. Our hope is that by enabling families and friends to send books to inmates we can have a positive influence on the lives of both the inmate and his or her family. Families can help their loved ones by ordering books from the comfort of their homes.

The cost of prison phone calls

For prisoners and their families, the telephone is more than just a means of communication. It is a lifeline. For urban families far from mostly rural prisons, the phone is often the only way to stay in touch with a loved one “behind the wall,” and studies have shown that sustaining family ties is key to preventing recidivism. Yet prison phone rates are so high that many families simply cannot afford to keep in touch. The Commonwealth now has an opportunity to lower prison phone rates and help build stronger communities. It should do so. A typical in-state call from a prison in Massachusetts has a three dollar connection fee, regardless of the length of the conversation, and then a 10-cent per minute charge, which results in at least $4.50 for only a 15-minute call, not including other fees tagged on by the phone companies. The calls are generally either made collect or through a pre-paid service, which means that the families themselves are required to pay in order to maintain contact with their loved one. Most of these families are living in impoverished circumstances and cannot afford these fees. To add insult to injury, the quality of telephone service for those in prison is terrible. The connection quality is usually extremely poor and dropped calls happen frequently. Not only does this prevent loved ones from connecting, but it usually means an added financial burden on the families of prisoners. The three dollar connection fee is levied every time a call is made, so if a call is lost, parents, children, or siblings are required to pay even more to reestablish the connection they just made. There is no reason for prison calls to cost so much. Technology has brought telephone costs down radically in recent years, and other states have far lower rates. Indeed, much of the bill for Massachusetts prison calls has nothing to do with the cost of providing service. Telephone companies vie for exclusive, monopoly contracts in each facility by offering “commissions” to the county, or in the case of the Department of Correction, to the Commonwealth. These commissions make up over half of the cost of calls in many counties, and over a third of the price of calls in the DOC. In county facilities, the commissions are used to pay for things like uniforms or prison programs, and in the DOC they are funneled into the Commonwealth’s general fund. It is unfair to ask relatives of prisoners, many of whom struggle to get by, to pad the state coffers or help cover the cost of running county jails. Reducing this burden on prisoners and their loved ones will help build safer communities. A 2003 review of studies said, “Prisoners who experienced more family contact… experienced lower recidivism rates and greater post-release success.” It’s also good prison management to make calls affordable. A 1999 Department of Justice review of studies observed that “telephone usage and other contacts with family contribute to inmate morale, better staff-inmate interactions, and more connection to the community, which in turn has made them less likely to return to prison.” Several family members have petitioned the Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable to take a close look at the exorbitant costs incurred by prison telephone service providers and to cap rates at a level that provide a reasonable profit but not more. It is the DTC’s role to determine if rates are just and reasonable. It seems clear that the telephone rates that prisoners and their families are paying are not. Given the fact that technology has made phone service delivery much cheaper for everyone, the fact that prison rates remain high – and remain attached to a virtually unfettered monopoly – is something that the DTC should be interested in examining. I was once a child with a father in prison, so I know how much a phone call can mean. No mother should be asked to choose between feeding her family or letting her child have contact with her father. The good news is that we all benefit from more just and reasonable phone rates for prisoners, in the form of reduced recidivism rates and stronger communities. Let’s hope that the DTC does the right thing.

A former bodyguard for champion boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. was sentenced to prison.

Posted: Aug. 28, 2012 | 11:21 a.m. A former bodyguard for champion boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. was sentenced to prison Tuesday for shooting at two men outside a roller skating rink in August 2009. Ocie Harris, 30, of Chicago was sentenced to a two- to five-year prison term.

He pleaded guilty in April to two counts of assault with a deadly weapon and one count of firing a weapon into a vehicle. Under his Alford plea, Harris did not admit guilty but acknowledged prosecutors could prove their case against him. Before being sentenced, Harris, wearing a charcoal suit, glasses and a head full of meticulously braided dreadlocks, addressed Judge Doug Herndon. "I would like to apologize for my actions and misunderstandings. It is not of my nature to harm anyone or to be harmed. I believe a gun was pointed in my direction from the car that was struck. I am so grateful and appreciative and thankful that God did not allow anyone to be harmed or hurt," said Harris, whose mother, girlfriend and other relatives attended the hearing. There was no evidence that the two men he was shooting at had a gun, court documents show. At least one witness in the parking lot of the skating center overheard Harris and another man speaking with Mayweather before the shooting, according to grand jury testimony. Harris and the other man told the boxer to leave and "we're going to take care of it," the transcripts show. The shooting happened moments later. Authorities say Harris shot at a BMW carrying Quincey Williams and Damein Bland as the car left the Crystal Palace parking lot on Boulder Highway. The car was hit six times. Williams and Bland said the shooting occurred after Mayweather threatened Williams' life over insulting text messages. No one was injured, and Mayweather was never charged. Williams, who has said he believes Mayweather told Harris to shoot, and Bland have sued the boxer and his associate. In a letter to Herndon, Williams wrote that he had to undergo counseling after the shooting. "This unfortunate ordeal has caused me a great deal of pain, suffering, sleepless nights, paranoia and grief," he wrote. Williams said he still lives in fear and remains on constant guard while in public or large crowds. "There are painful reminders that keep me on alert," he wrote. "For instance, car wheels screeching can cause me to panic." During the 30-minute sentencing hearing, prosecutor Sam Bateman asked for a maximum sentence on two counts, while defense lawyer Tom Pitaro sought probation for Harris. Bateman said the senseless shooting over a text message took place as the skating rink was closing and families and children filtered into the parking lot. Pitaro said that Harris had no criminal convictions though he grew up in a hardened housing project in Chicago. Pitaro blamed the shooting on Williams and Bland, specifically Bland, who has a criminal record. They went to the skating rink to cause trouble with Mayweather, Pitaro said. Prosecutors tried to pressure Harris into fingering Mayweather in the case, Pitaro added. "He would not do that, because he didn't believe it was true," Pitaro said. Prosecutors have said there was not enough evidence to charge Mayweather. Herndon also ordered Harris to pay $23,950 in restitution. Contact reporter Francis McCabe at fmccabe@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039.

NEW YORK, August 28, 2012 – SureShot Books has sent Spanish books to inmates of several prisons across the United States. Sending books to inmates has always been the main goal of the company. The company has been founded in order to help inmates improve themselves through education as they spend time in prison and await their release. SureShot Books have always believed that education can be attained through reading and discovering anew a world full of possibilities. While awaiting release, inmates will be able to spend their time learning new things and skills that may be able to help them have a new life after their incarceration in jail. As it has always been the belief of the company and its members that mistakes do not mean the end of one’s life, sending books to inmates gives them the chance to improve their lives through valuable education. What better way to help them get educated than by sending them books that may catch their interest and help them discover new skills that will give them the chance to reintegrate themselves back into the community as soon as they get out of the prison. Because a lot of these inmates don’t have English as their first language, having books in Spanish will help them get acquainted to reading and the resources that the company offers. Aside from these, the company encourages the families and friends of inmates to send their incarcerated loved ones with books through the company in order to help further their education as they await they time in jail. Purchasing books and other reading materials for inmates can be done via the company via online orders. To further the inmates’ interest in education and reading, inmates can even order reading materials through the SureShot Books and have them sent to their loved ones via the company. It has always been the belief of the company that education can always be the major factor that will allow inmates to hope and change for a better life ahead of them. The mind isn’t locked up even if the body is. Therefore, reading is a kind of alleviation for these people who have to spend time in jail until release may be allowed for them. About SureShot Books SureShot Books is a company that has been founded by a group of companies during the nineties. It has been put up with the main aim of helping families improve the lives of incarcerated loved ones through furthering the inmates’ education through books. They believe that by sending books to inmates, inmates are provided the opportunity to redirect their lives and have better chances of finding new skills to use by the time they are allowed to get back into the community. Contact: SureShot Books Publisher’s 15 North Mill Street Nyack, Ny 10960 info@sureshotbooks.com 888.608.0868